Artifacts of Empathy: Cultivating, Identifying, and Assessing Students’ Development and Written Articulations of Empathy in a Community Engagement Course

By Stephanie May de Montigny

I began this research in the Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars Program because, while I had seen my students develop their empathy in my community engagement courses, I wanted to help them better recognize and deepen that empathy. This led me to explore the many cognitive processes that scholars term empathy. I then examined students’ final written reflections to look for “artifacts” or evidence of their empathic development. In particular, I looked for how deeply students understood empathy and how they recognized multiple perspectives and positionality. Students imagined themselves in others’ positions in multiple ways but also pushed further to envision how others’ beliefs and experience shaped their responses. In addition, I considered whether learning about others’ perspectives activated a “valuing path” that inspired empathic action. I gauged students’ written expressions of empathy as novice, intermediate, or advanced, depending on whether they merely recognized the practice or if they articulated a more complex understanding of their empathic development. Especially adept reflections went further, describing specific details or examples from real-world experiences to illustrate their arguments. These students employed the same writing strategies that strengthen academic papers in general. Examples from students’ written reflections pointed to conversation and listening skills as essential elements in fostering empathy through community engagement experiences. Based on my research, I suggested ways to revise prompts and rubrics to encourage students to recognize and articulate their empathic development. 

Read the TLI article here.