Success through empathy?

The SEMO (Social-Emotional Characteristics of Successful Teachers) research group at the IPN focuses on the effects of teachers' social-emotional competence and occupational well-being on teaching quality and the academic and affective-motivational development of students. Here, we present selected research findings of the SEMO group on teachers' social-emotional competence and shed light on the role of empathy and emotion regulation, as two central aspects of social-emotional competence, for teaching quality and students' development.

Ms. Miller recently began teaching an 8th grade math class. One of the students, Tim, does not pay attention in class, frequently talks to the person sitting next to him, can rarely answer questions posed to him, and often fails to complete his homework or does not do it at all.

What makes Tim behave this way? Is he bored with the subject? Are the tasks too difficult for him? Is he avoiding math because he's afraid or doesn't feel comfortable in class? And how does the teacher feel about this situation? Perhaps Ms. Miller is annoyed by Tim's lack of motivation. She may feel helpless because she doesn't know how to help him or fear that Tim's behavior is becoming increasingly destructive and disruptive.

Many teachers are familiar with these and similar situations: After all, social interactions with students are at the core of their profession. These interactions often generate a wide range of emotions from both sides. In order to cope with these social interactions, teachers need generic knowledge and skills in addition to content-specific ones. As early as 2009, the research field emphasized the importance of teachers' social-emotional competence and occupational well-being for successful teaching and learning processes in a theoretical model.

Teachers' social-emotional competence

Empathy and emotion regulation are considered two key aspects of social-emotional competence.

Teachers’ Empathy

Empathy is the ability to take the perspective of others, to recognize their emotions, and sympathize with them. Theoretically, it can be hypothesized that understanding and recognizing the emotions of others enables one to accurately assess the needs of students, while sympathizing with students increases motivation to respond to their emotions. Teachers can show empathy by proactively and deliberately checking for clues from students about whether they need support or help. This does not only mean to answer questions, but to be aware of students’ behavior, facial expressions, and gestures, which may signal academic or social difficulties.

Teachers’ Emotion Regulation

Emotion regulation allows teachers to control which emotions they themselves experience and how they express them in the classroom. Changing the situation that triggers emotions in the long term is one of the most effective emotion regulation strategies. Sometimes, however, changing a situation is not possible and leaves little room for action. Cognitive strategies have proven to be very helpful in this case. These strategies alter the teacher’s thoughts and enable them to adopt a different perspective in order to change the emotional experience. One example is cognitive reappraisal, which involves detaching ourselves from negative thoughts and viewing stress-triggering situations from a new perspective. Furthermore, some strategies exist considered to be rather ineffective, especially expressive regulation, which means to change the way people express their emotions but not how the actually feel. One particularly prominent form of expressive regulation is suppression. This strategy is harmful in the long run not only for the teacher himself, but also for the relationship with the students. Because despite the attempt not to let one's own anger show, the students continue to perceive it.

Open Questions Regarding Teachers’ Social-Emotional Competence

Little is known about the effects of social-emotional competence on teaching and student development. Knowledge of this kind is especially relevant for the training and continuing education of teachers, to ensure that the teaching programs can be tailored accordingly. Only in recent years have empirical studies increasingly been devoted to this question. In two systematic reviews, the SEMO working group therefore summarized the findings obtained so far on the role of (1) empathy and (2) emotion regulation for the quality of teaching and the development of students. The focus was on the three key dimensions of instructional quality-emotional support, classroom management, and instructional support-as well as students' cognitive (e.g., mathematics achievement) and noncognitive (e.g., interest in instruction, social-emotional competence) outcomes in both academic and nonacademic settings.

Research findings

A systematic literature search of relevant databases revealed 41 relevant studies on teacher empathy and 57 studies on emotion regulation. Notably, the majority of the studies were published within the past ten years, indicating that the research field is still young. In most cases, teachers were asked to self-assess their empathy or emotion regulation, and in many cases a general assessment was made without reference to their professional activities. Teacher-student interaction quality and student outcomes were also predominantly self-assessed by teachers.

The majority of studies did not associate teacher empathy with the three basic dimensions of teaching quality, i.e., neither with emotional support, classroom management, or professional support, nor with global assessments of teaching quality. Only for handling bullying, which can be considered a sub-aspect of emotional support, were teachers who felt more empathy with victims of bullying in hypothetical scenarios shown more willing to support and intervene. There also appeared to be little correlation between teacher empathy and students' cognitive and psychosocial development.

Together, these findings make the relevance of empathy seem questionable. However, since self-assessments of empathy can be positively biased, the validity of previous studies is limited. Moreover, the specific demands that interactions with students place on teachers' empathy cannot be represented by a general survey without reference to the professional context. Consequently, further studies using objective, profession-specific methods would be desirable, but are lacking to date. A starting point in the development of appropriate measurement instruments could be the test developed by the SEMO research group to assess the ability to regulate emotions and manage relationships.

With regard to teachers' emotion regulation, the results of the systematic review article discussed here showed that expressive regulation, i.e., suppressing or faking emotions, was associated with less emotional and instructional support for students and more ineffective classroom management. There was also preliminary evidence that expressive regulation was associated with poorer student outcomes, for example, less prosocial behavior. Cognitive regulation, on the other hand, was associated with increased emotional support, at least from the teachers' perspective.

Consequently, expressive regulation in particular seems to be associated with teaching quality and student outcomes. Suppressing or feigning emotions without actually changing one's own feelings is more likely to be associated with negative consequences. However, it is equally conceivable that, for example, dealing with challenging students may increase negative emotions so that teachers feel compelled to use expressive regulation to meet the demands of their role. It is not possible to answer the question of causality based on the existing studies to date.

Conclusion

Although previous studies have not clearly underscored the importance of empathy and emotion regulation, further research on this topic seems worthwhile. From a theoretical perspective, compelling arguments exist for the assumption that empathy and emotion regulation are associated with teaching quality and student development. Moreover, students also cite empathy as an important trait of teachers, and emotion regulation is significant for teachers' occupational well-being and thus could be effective at multiple levels. The SEMO research group at the IPN has already demonstrated that social-emotional competence can be fostered in a targeted manner through training already during studies, so that this offers a starting point for the effective improvement of teaching.

Dr. Karen Aldrup

is a research scientist in the Department of Educational Research and Educational Psychology at the IPN. The graduate psychologist is primarily concerned with questions about the teacher-student relationship and the social-emotional competence of teachers and its effects on the occupational well-being of teachers as well as on the development of students.

aldrup@leibniz-ipn.de

Further literature

Aldrup, K., Carstensen, B., & Klusmann, U. (2022). Is empathy the key to effective teaching? A systematic review of its association with teacher-student interactions and student outcomes. Educational Psychology Review, 76(1), 103. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-021-09649-y

Aldrup, K., Carstensen, B., & Klusmann, U. (revised and resubmitted). The role of teachers’ emotion regulation in teacher-student interactions and student outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Aldrup, K., Carstensen, B., Köller, M. M., & Klusmann, U. (2020). Measuring teachers’ social-emotional competence: Development and validation of a situational judgment test. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 217. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00892

Carstensen, B., Köller, M., & Klusmann, U. (2019). Förderung sozial-emotionaler Kompetenz von angehenden Lehrkräften: Konzeption und Evaluation eines Trainingsprogramms [Improving prospective teachers’ social-emotional competence: Development and evaluation of a training program]. Zeitschrift Für Entwicklungspsychologie Und Pädagogische Psychologie, 51(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1026/0049-8637/a000205