Exploring teacher empathy in early childhood education : perception, understanding, and protices

Abstract

The foundations for learning are built in the early years of life, when children start their first journey of education. During the process, they need other people to be with for helping them to obtain their healthy development. One can do it is teachers whom children are dependent on them at school. Therefore, this study responds to the need by focusing on teachers' perspectives while teaching young children at school. This qualitative study describes the lived experience of nine Indonesian preschool teachers from nine kindergarten schools responding to empathy matters during the teaching process in early childhood education. Informed by Nodding's care relational theory and Cooper's empathy classification in teaching and learning, this study explores the teachers' perception of empathy, their understanding, and their practice in the educational setting. In responding to the first aspect, I addressed the question: "How do teachers perceive the concept of empathy?" and the second research question to the second aspect was: "How do teachers understand empathy in the process of teaching and learning?" following the third research question: "How do teachers practice empathy in the educational setting?". The Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) approach was used to explore the teachers experiences in answering the three research questions. Data sources were obtained from interviews and observation and analysed using six stage process of the IPA approach. The stages are sorting to the general sense, extracting or finding significant statements, formulating meaning, clustering themes, and repeating the process and culminating to the last step to describe the phenomenon. The first findings related to teachers' perception of empathy reveal a range of themes pertaining to the concept of empathy. It is centered on teachers perception, word frequency, and teachers experience in understanding young children's empathy. The second findings for teachers understanding on empathy in the process of teaching and learning primarily focus on teachers' understanding which is divided into some discussion; empathy in young children, and the role of teacher empathy in education. and the experiences of teacher empathy in teaching. The last finding discusses the teachers' practice of teacher empathy illustrate a range of experiences in dealing with students' traits, the ability to communicate with students and parents, classroom activities to nurture empathy, the constraints and challenges for demonstrating teacher empathy, both from teachers and parents perspectives. This study contributes to policy makers and teacher educators to build a pedagogical framework for early childhood-empathy-based education. It gives an insight into the importance of empathy while developing a learning module for students by involving some empathy aspects in the teaching and learning process. For the upcoming research, the variety of approaches and participants can add richness of data and deeply explore the concept of empathy in education from various settings and different perspectives.