3 Empathy and peace competencies

In this section, you’ll consider what empathy is and its application in peace education. This is the starting point for thinking about peace competencies.

Scholars Mukhopadhyay and Kundu propose a global academic framework for education focused on developing peace and harmony. Within this model, empathy is listed as an essential life skill – something that one does or performs – alongside skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, and communication. They argue that, although it is possible these skills might be ‘picked up’, their development should not be left to chance and their teaching should be part of a clearly articulated curriculum (Mukhopadhyay and Kundu, 2023, p. 17).

Polat and Halçe draw on a range of scholars to define empathy as a process where the individual can understand how another might feel, put themselves in their place, look at events from their viewpoint and communicate with another by whatever means necessary based on this empathetic work (Polat and Halçe, 2023, p. 277). From their perspective, empathy is more than just understanding another’s perspective, it is acting with that understanding, moderating one’s own actions and communicating clearly with the other. They say that being able to understand the world from another’s point of view can help people establish healthy relationships without ‘judging, humiliating [or] blaming, thus lessening the need for conflict’ (Polat and Halçe, 2023, p. 281). The development of empathy was therefore the focus of a peace building programme that Polat and Halçe ran in Gölcük, Kocaeli (a diverse area of Turkey), with some success.

All this research stresses that empathy can be taught. Such teaching can take place through a range of activities and curriculum areas as well as through the everyday activities of school life, such as managing playground disputes or charity fundraising days. However, for such teaching to be successful, children and young people need regular opportunities to practise their developing empathy.

Activity 4 Teaching empathy

Timing: Allow approximately 10 minutes for this activity

In this activity you will read about another activity used by Peacemakers and consider how you could adapt it in your own classroom.

In this instance ‘empathy footsteps’ is being used as part of a lesson about conflict resolution. Remember though that empathy is a skill that can be developed across the curriculum as a way of enhancing understanding of human behaviour in a range of contexts.

Read through this explanation of empathy footsteps as it appears in the Peacemakers book Learning for Peace, and make notes in the response box below about how you might use it in the classroom.

Empathy Footsteps

Figure 4 An extract from Learning for Peace

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An extract from Learning for Peace. The page is titled ‘Empathy footsteps’. This is followed by the activity ‘Aim: To explore empathy’, ‘Skills: Empathy, looking, listening, participating, thinking’ and ‘Age: 7-11’. There then follows a list of activity instructions, showing four parts: You need two pairs of paper feet on the floor that children can stand on, facing each other. 1. Act out a simple conflict between two people, e.g. Tariq has lost his pencil and he thinks Ellie has taken it. 2. Ellie and Tariq stand in ‘their own’ footsteps facing each other and tell each other how they feel using an ‘I’ statement (see p. 48), e.g. “I felt angry… when… because…I would like it if…” 3. They then swap over and stand in each other’s footsteps. They acknowledge each other’s feelings by repeating back what they said e.g. “I heard you say you were angry because…And you would like it if…” 4. They return to their own footsteps and talk about how it felt to be in the other’s shoes. They could talk about the ideas raised by the other person and this can lead to ideas to then try to resolve the conflict.

Figure 4 An extract from Learning for Peace

Comment

Peacemakers propose using an activity such as ‘empathy footsteps’ as a way of teaching empathy as part of a wider peace curriculum. You may have thought about using empathy footsteps as a strategy for helping children and young people explore classroom conflicts, and considering how peaceful solutions might be negotiated. Children and young people with different viewpoints on the conflict could try occupying each other’s footsteps as a way of placing themselves in their shoes.

As with all the activities suggested in this course, ‘empathy footsteps’ can form part of a repertoire of teaching techniques that could be employed in a wider curriculum. You may have thought about how this activity could be used as part of curriculum learning, perhaps with students role-playing different characters in scenarios from literature and history lessons, so they might learn to understand the different viewpoints around particular topics.