1 Introduction

Empathy has profound impacts on young people’s personal development, cultural knowledge, and engagement with social change (e.g. Krznaric, 2015; Mirra, 2018; O’Grady, 2020; West, 2017). Conceptualised as the ability to see from another’s perspective through emotion, imagination, and experience, empathy is crucial in understanding and celebrating difference, which has significant implications in today’s multicultural world. Considering the vast and lasting benefits of empathy (Aspy, 1975; Bal & Veltkamp, 2013; Mirra, 2018), and its apparent decline in modern contexts (Gonski Institute for Education, 2020; Konrath et al, 2011), it is becoming increasingly important to consider how empathy can be cultivated in young people.

Despite its known benefits, research on empathy’s value and implementation in formal learning contexts is nascent in Australia. As such, this study investigated the following research questions:

  • How are Australian English educators teaching with, for, and about empathy?

  • In what ways do educators believe that empathy influences student learning in secondary English?

This research addressed these gaps in existing and emerging literature by interrogating the perspectives and experiences of high school English teachers in the Australian state of New South Wales through a multiple case study composed of a state-wide survey of 50 teachers and in-depth interviews with 10 teachers. Given the timing of this study, the COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique opportunity to research empathy during a time of global crisis and local educational disruption. This study aimed to contribute to the growing field of research about empathy in English education, and emerging scholarship on the pandemic’s effect on pedagogy and praxis.

2 Literature review

2.1 A framework for empathy

Empathy involves the capacity for one person to share and understand another person’s internal states. Weisz and Zaki (2017) suggest that empathy involves three related, yet distinct, subprocesses. First, mentalising refers to the ability to draw inferences about someone else’s thoughts and emotions. Second, experience sharing involves the process of vicariously experiencing another’s emotional state. And finally, empathetic concern includes the desire to respond to someone else’s suffering. These subprocesses are not mutually exclusive, rather they are often interconnected and interactive. Compassion relates to empathetic concern, and it can be understood as the ability to perceive and the desire to alleviate others’ distress (Goetz et al., 2010). Unlike empathy, compassion does not require someone to vicariously share another’s lived experiences, and it often focuses responding to others’ negative emotional states (Weisz & Zaki, 2017).

2.2 The case for investigating empathy in education

Prior scholarship suggests that empathy in learning has significant value for enhancing creativity (Bal & Veltkamp, 2013; Cuzzo et al., 2017), academic performance (Aspy, 1975), communication and collaboration skills (Jones et al. 2014; Mar et al., 2009), emotional intelligence (Borba, 2018), and young people’s ability to form and foster healthy relationships (Cooper, 2011; Demetriou, 2018). Several key studies that examined empathy as a concept and a quality have revealed a perceived decline in young people’s empathy levels. A comprehensive study in the USA used cross-temporal meta-analytic methods and found that young adults were 40% less empathetic than the prior generation (Konrath et al, 2011). A subsequent group-randomised trial by Williford et al. (2016) suggested that a decline in cognitive empathy may occur as children move into adolescence and shift from primary to secondary schools, only to increase throughout the teenage years until reaching adulthood. This decline has been mirrored in recent Australian research by The Gonski Institute for Education (2020) that found that in a survey of 2000 Australian educators, 80% of respondents perceived a decline in their students’ empathy. This trend has led to a socially and politically recognised ‘empathy deficit’ (Obama, 2006; Mirra, 2018). Additionally, some scholars posit that there may be an egocentrism and individualism in today’s youth that is more deeply pronounced than in previous generations (Borba, 2018; Konrath et al, 2011). Similarly, there are arguments for and against the idea that this reduction in empathy for others and emphasised focus on self stems from the rise of social media and technology (Gonski Institute for Education, 2020; Krznaric, 2015).

Research indicates that interventions to improve students’ socioemotional skills tend to be less successful in early adolescence, particularly when they involve direct appeals from authority figures, such as teachers (Yeager et al., 2018). Moreover, most efforts to build empathy, such as through role-play activities, class discussions, and visual representations, use a skills-based approach that focuses on taking perspectives and recognising emotions. Scholars like Weisz and Zaki (2017) suggest that young people are quite capable of empathising, but often they are simply not motivated to do so. As Weisz et al. (2022) argue, “Empathy, after all, is more than just the ability to connect with others — it also requires the desire to do so” (p. 2). Rather than focusing on building skills, they posit that a focus on motivation, particularly the role of social norms and mindsets, is instrumental in cultivating empathy in young adults.

Taking into consideration the consensus that empathy can be learned (Cuzzo et al., 2017), the present study drew on Lanzoni’s (2018) conceptualisation of empathy as “our capacity to grasp and understand the mental and emotional lives of others. As such, schools have an important role in teaching with, for, and about empathy, as they are distinct sites of social, emotional, and whole-person development (Freire & Macedo, 1987). Teaching with empathy entails approaching learners as individuals and considering how teachers can model and enact empathy for them (Aspy, 1975; Mirra, 2018). Teaching for empathy relates to how educators are encouraging or facilitating the development and practise of students’ skills and thinking that prompts them to respond empathetically to others, while teaching about empathy involves interrogating the concept, its limitations, and applications with students (Cuzzo et al., 2017). Scholars agree that each of these approaches should be utilised harmoniously in educational contexts in order to effectively achieve holistic empathy education that encourages strong relationships, self-awareness, and social action (Cooper, 2011; Mirra, 2018).

2.3 Empathy’s historical and contemporary place in education

Empathy has been considered since the latter part of the nineteenth century as ‘feeling into’ the experiences of others through shared experiences or imitation of the experience emotionally, imaginatively, or physically (Titchener, 1909). Since the second World War, social and moral development has been emphasised as part of the purpose of schooling. While the role of schools has been consistently debated over the past century, the social function of education (Freire & Macedo, 1987) has remained paramount in Australian educational policy rhetoric (see Education Council, 2019; Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA), 2008). Similarly, the place of social and emotional learning in schooling has been heavily deliberated (Philibert, 2017), with the majority of research finding it is most effective when consistently embedded in the curriculum (Borba, 2018; Philibert, 2017). Further, research has suggested the key role that teachers play in preparing and provoking their students to practise empathy and develop skills related to social action for others (Schey & Blackburn, 2019).

Over the past decade, there has been an ‘affective turn’ in education (Leander & Ehret, 2019), resulting in increased attention on emotions, embodied interactions, and relationships in literacy research and learning. Internationally, English has been considered as a vital site for empathy, primarily because of the subject’s grounding in literacy and meaning making (Curwood & Bull, in press; Dutro, 2019; Patterson, 2008). Mirra’s (2018) work on “critical civic empathy” (p. 7) considers the importance of schools in encouraging self-awareness in empathy which can lead to greater understandings of both personal privilege and social power. This iteration of empathy is highly regarded amongst contemporary educational scholars who note its benefits and applicability in our diverse twenty-first century society. However, scholarship also notes the limitations of empathy, including the problematic nature of passive empathy (O’Grady, 2020), the importance of being aware of one’s own “blindspots” (Mirra, 2018, p. 104), and the dangers of empathy when applied selectively, practised performatively, or enacted with a form of uncritical ‘identification’ with the other and its propensity to result in partiality (Hogan, 1973).

Prior research has explored teaching and learning empathy through various approaches, including teacher modelling (Rosenberg, 2015), embodied learning (Ewing & Saunders, 2016), and reading various forms of literature (Bal & Veltkamp, 2013; Kidd & Castano, 2013; Mar et al., 2009), all of which can be readily integrated into the secondary English curriculum. Pedagogical approaches underpinned by empathy have been deemed valuable in shaping student engagement in learning (Cooper, 2011; Keen, 2013), which is conceptualised in scholarship as the enactment of an internalised motivation to learn (Christenson et al., 2010). Presently, English is seen in Australian educational policy as a space for communication and literacy Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2016 and the development of “critical and imaginative faculties that broaden [students’] capacity for cultural understanding” (New South Wales Education Standards Authority (NESA), 2012, p. 10).

2.4 The role of empathy in education during times of disruption

Education is consistently impacted by and involved in response and recovery processes related to natural disasters and crises (Smawfield, 2013). Schools are often conceptualised as a vital resource for preparing students to understand and respond to catastrophes before they happen (Burns, 2013; Newtown, 2013). More consistently, they are viewed as crucial spaces for students to develop resilience, process their experiences, and access support in the wake of panic, trauma and loss (Gawith, 2011; Le Brocque et al., 2017; Omidvari, 2017). The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted learning on a global scale (Verachia, 2020). In the face of the pandemic, the emphasis of most emergent scholarship has been on the importance and value of teachers supporting students (Hicks, 2020; Kim-Rich & Curwood, 2023), with consensual significance placed on flexible teacher expectations and understanding and catering for students’ experiences and needs (Curwood & Jones, 2022; Shelton et al., 2020). Each of these factors incorporates the idea of teacher empathy for students, despite it not being explicitly named in the majority of scholarship.

Within the relatively small scope of literature available in relation to education during the pandemic, the focus has been on short-term impacts (Bedford et al., 2020). In their work, Shelton et al. (2020) emphasised three dispositions for ‘humanising pedagogies’ for learning during the pandemic which focused on care, changing course content, formats and pacing in response to student needs, and the importance of critiquing issues of power, access and representation. Interestingly, these relate to Mirra’s (2018) aforementioned notion of critical civic empathy. Similarly, the focus on ‘humanising’ learning is embedded within notable early scholarship on empathy education (Aspy, 1972, 1975).

The NSW English Teachers Association conducted a study during the pandemic that yielded valuable insights from its members (Yager, 2020). Their findings emphasised the idea of learning from the pandemic, which has been common rhetoric in educational literature (Phillips, 2020). Notably, relating to students’ experiences and enabling their voices and perspectives to be heard — in unspoken terms, encouraging teaching with empathy for students — was encouraged, while commentary on teaching for or about empathy during this time was absent.

3 The study

3.1 Research design

As qualitative research explores how individuals construct meaning through interaction with their worlds (Merriam & Tisdell, 2009), the study used methods such as open-ended survey questions and interviews with a representative sample to offer more nuanced data about empathy in schools, especially during the pandemic. Quantitative methods were also applied with Likert scales and in relation to the frequency of codes in open-ended survey responses, in order to offer insight into the predispositions of a greater number of participants (Patton, 2015). This data was used to elaborate on or corroborate ideas emerging in the qualitative findings, and therefore enabled for the triangulation of data across multiple data sets. Conceptualising each of the ten interview participants as their own case study allowed us to highlight how teachers’ beliefs and actions shape, and are shaped by, social and cultural contexts.

3.2 Research context and participants

The study was conducted in 2020 in the midst of the first wave of the pandemic in the state of New South Wales, Australia. This meant that teachers reflected on their experiences of teaching during the pandemic while they were either still teaching remotely as a result of mandated school closures, or within the immediate period of returning to school after the 2020 lockdowns. This research and its data collection preceded the longer and arguably stricter lockdowns of 2021 but captured insights during a time where the population was facing mandates never before seen in Australia.

References to guiding documentation pertain to the NSW English K-10 Syllabus (2012) and the Australian Curriculum Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2016, which were in place at the time of this study. Participants were recruited for the study via social media, including Facebook Groups such as English Teachers Association NSW, which has almost 8000 active members from Government, Independent, and Catholic schools. Table 1 summarises the relevant demographic information about 50 survey respondents, which reflects the diversity of the broader population of English educators across NSW high schools which serve students in Years 7 to 12. At the conclusion of the survey, respondents were given the opportunity to express interest in further involvement in the study. A representative sample of 10 secondary English teachers were selected as focal participants to complete an interview (see Table 2).

Table 1 Survey participant demographics
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Table 2 Focal participant information
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3.3 Data collection

In order to gather a broad spectrum of diverse perspectives and evidence to bolster the study’s credibility (Saldaña, 2011), this research utilised multiple data sources, including an online survey and 30- to 60-min interviews with focal participants. The online survey component utilised both Likert scale and short-answer questions that asked teachers about their perceived role in teaching empathy, how they incorporate empathy in their lessons, what impact they believe empathy has on student learning, and the role empathy played during COVID-19.

Utilising open-ended, semi-structured interviews with focal case study participants enabled flexible and reactive questioning to both respect and elicit the unique worldviews and experiences of each teacher (Campbell, 2013; Patton, 2015). This approach generated rich, insightful data and unanticipated responses (Peräkylä & Ruusuvuori, 2011), which helped account for any research subjectivities in the study’s design. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed, and all participants were given the opportunity to member-check their transcripts for accuracy, reinforcing the trustworthiness of the research.

3.4 Data analysis

Through collecting multiple data sources and engaging in iterative and reflective data analysis, we sought to gain insight into our research questions related to how Australian teachers taught with, for, and about empathy as well as how they conceptualised empathy and student learning in the English curriculum. Iterative rounds of coding were applied to the open-ended survey responses and interviews. This allowed themes to emerge naturally from the data corpus, rather than presupposing them onto the data. The first cycle of coding involved line-by-line consideration of participant responses, wherein significant fragments were labelled with a combination of in vivo and descriptive coding. This enabled the extrapolation of key themes largely rooted in the participants’ own language (Saldaña, 2011).

During the second cycle of coding, patterns and themes were identified across the various data sources, enabling categories to be formed and the number of codes to be reduced, such as “flexible expectations” becoming a broader code for initial codes such as “extra time” and “more leniency.” Qualitative findings from the data sets were cross-referenced with quantitative data to help evaluate salient themes and consider their applicability and relevance. For example, prominent codes emerging from interviews and open-ended survey responses, such as “empathy = engagement = academic success” were checked against the percentage of participants who agreed or strongly agreed with statements such as “students who have capacity for empathy are more academically successful in their learning” in order to understand how common this perspective was amongst NSW English teachers, and whether there were points of contention that required further consideration.

The Likert scale survey results detailed the number of participants who aligned with certain statements on a scale of strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree. These were then evaluated in order to examine points of similarity and difference in perspectives, and then considered alongside the qualitative responses from the survey’s open-ended questions and individual interviews with focal participants. Throughout the analysis process, a series of analytic memos were written in order to synthesise the data (Miles et al., 2014).

4 Findings and discussion

Conducted during an unprecedented time of global crisis, this study offers two key findings. Firstly, in line with existing research, the majority of Australian English teachers recognised the value of empathy in learning and noted its positive impact on student engagement. However, teachers disagreed about empathy’s relationship to academic performance, which suggested that some curriculum and assessment design in the New South Wales education system may have a limited impact. Secondly, there was a trend of teachers being deterred from teaching explicitly about empathy largely because they felt it was not prescribed in the state’s English Syllabus, which highlights a limitation in the way empathy-based pedagogies are currently being enacted in New South Wales schools.

4.1 “Engaging with a world beyond themselves”: teachers’ pedagogical approaches and beliefs about the influence of empathy on learning

English, as a multifaceted subject, is dependent on adaptation, cultural responsiveness, and pedagogical awareness in order to remain meaningful and relevant for students. Despite constant oscillation in content and practitioners’ varying standpoints regarding the influence empathy may have on academic ‘results’, English teachers in New South Wales consider empathy as a highly valuable tool for fostering student engagement and deepening learning. Survey and interview data indicated a general agreement amongst participants that empathy plays a core role in engaging students in learning. To focal participants and survey respondents alike, ‘engagement’ involved motivation, participation, and interest in tasks, texts, and content. Some survey respondents spoke to the belief that studying texts and evoking empathy are mutually constitutive, with 10% of survey participants explicitly stating a relationship between empathy and the ability to ‘access’ texts, and 20% specifically noting that empathy is required for, or is a product of, engaging deeply with texts. This aligns with previous scholarship about how empathy enriches encounters with literature and how, in return, exposure to literature can develop personal capacities for empathy (Bal & Veltkamp, 2013; Mar et al., 2009). Thematic analysis of open-ended survey responses revealed recurrent emphasis on the role empathy plays in engaging students deeply with texts, their themes and characters, as the codes ‘relating to characters’, ‘feeling emotions’, ‘understanding context’ and ‘discerning motives’ were amongst the most common within this data set. This aligns with Keen’s (2013) conceptualisation of ‘narrative empathy,’ wherein audiences participate in “the sharing of feeling and perspective-taking induced by reading, viewing, hearing or imagining narratives of another’s situation and condition” (p. 14).

Beyond engagement with texts, all focal participants expressed a belief that empathy-based pedagogies can unlock deeper learning about humanity and stronger engagement across the entirety of English as a subject. When speaking about their approaches to teaching with, for, and about empathy, teachers emphasised teacher-student relationships (“rapport”, “modelling empathy”, “knowing students”), text selection (“the texts you engage them with”) and curriculum design (“what you actually get them to do”, “not just filler activities”). The most commonly reported empathy-related curriculum design choices were embodied learning, in- role writing, and collaborative discussions, which can promote experience sharing and cultivate empathetic concern. These approaches align with research about the benefits of drama-based, creative, and collaborative activities in unlocking empathy for students (Cooper, 2011; Ewing & Saunders, 2016).

One point of contention was the belief that empathy in learning can enable greater academic proficiency, which teachers generally defined as the achievement of high standards in syllabus-based assessments. Given the participants’ agreement that teaching with and for empathy correlates with student engagement, and the plethora of research suggesting engagement impacts positively on academic achievement (Churchill, 2018), focal participants’ responses were considered closely in order to offer nuanced insights into this inconsistency. For some survey and focal participants, there was a shared belief that student empathy, or students being engaged in learning using empathy, can correlate with academic success. For instance, Dominic outlined that in his teaching of Animal Farm to a Year 7 mixed ability class, he utilised various embodied learning activities in combination with imaginative in-role writing tasks, rather than focusing solely on historical context and language analysis, a strategy that has prompted deeper understandings of characters’ emotional states and motivations in previous research (Kidd & Castano, 2013). Through activities such as tableaux, collaborative work to design and run a hypothetical farm, and guided reflections, Dominic wanted students to “really empathise with the characters in the novel, even with the villains.” He believed that through this approach, he unlocked the historical context of Orwell’s work and interrogated its preoccupation with power in a rich, memorable way with students, which, in turn, positively impacted their assessment performance. Dominic reported that in their analytic essays, which were marked across the grade, “a huge amount of kids in that class got 20 out of 20”, and that even those who achieved mid-range marks were able to “talk deeply about power.” Dominic emphasised that he felt his students’ understandings and engagement with the complex text surpassed that of other classes because they interacted with it empathetically.

Lola, Madeleine, Valerie, and Betty affirmed the relationship between student empathy, engagement, and academic achievement in English. Conversely, the other five focal participants were wary of this correlation. For example, Eleanor stressed the disjuncture between students’ empathic connections with and understandings of a text and their ability to “express that in written form.” Both Isla and Katarina reiterated this same point, stating that while students may engage deeply with a text by practising empathy, they may not possess the skills to perform successfully in assessments.

The belief that empathy more strongly influences engagement than academic achievement was reiterated in the survey results, wherein 62% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that students with higher empathic capacities are more academically ‘successful’ in their learning compared to the much greater 95% that agreed or strongly agreed that empathy in English resulted in deeper learning because it influenced relevance, engagement, understanding and students’ ability to access texts. This finding affirms prior research that suggests teaching with and for empathy has benefits for learning and personal, emotional, and social development when embedded meaningfully in learning contexts (Philibert, 2017). Similarly, the study’s results present English as a suitable space to embed this learning, because of its interactions with a range of fiction and nonfiction texts that lend themselves toward both mentalising and experience sharing. However, the general consensus that empathy promotes deeper learning and engagement must be considered against participants’ beliefs that this does not always result in academic achievement as it is currently measured. This suggests a disconnect between the purported ideals of subject English and the types of knowledge and skills currently valued and prioritised in both school assessments and standardised exams.

4.2 “We have so many other things to teach”: the absence of teaching about empathy

Despite overwhelming agreement about the significance of empathy in and for learning, Australian English teachers generally avoided teaching explicitly about empathy. Notably, seven out of ten focal participants stated that they “never explicitly” name or define empathy. This trend was summarised by Dina, who shared:

I might have talked about the word a few times, but I don’t think I’ve ever explicitly defined it or referred to it in a way where I say, ‘We are doing this because I want to build your empathy.’ [...] I guess I talk around the idea.

Dina works at an Intensive English Centre with students who have recently arrived in Australia and are learning English as an additional language. As such, dissecting the term ‘empathy’ and its applications may be even more necessary in this context. Valerie, Lola, and Betty reported that they taught about empathy primarily in the context of differentiating it from sympathy, or when a character can be used as a basis for discussions about empathy, such as the character of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Valerie also outlined that she discusses “empathic capacity” with students — what she considers the ability of a text to produce an empathic response from the reader — in order to attribute value to literary works.

Most teachers believed empathy would “come through” implicitly in activities, meaning there was no need to teach explicitly about it. These participants reasoned that empathy is not part of the syllabus requirements, as Lola explained: “It’s not something where you get to the end and go, ‘Okay, done that! Tick that off the list.’” The influence of the syllabus on teachers’ motivations to teach about empathy was reiterated in survey responses, for example: “Teach with empathy—sure. Teach empathy – no. We have so many other things to teach that are in the syllabus and are more important.” This sentiment was reiterated in the quantitative survey data, where 76% saw empathy as an educational priority, while only 56% felt it was valued in the NSW English Syllabus and Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. While empathy is not in the wording of any key syllabus outcomes for K-10 English, it is noted in the content descriptors for several learning outcomes, including EN4-7D, EN5-2A and ENLS-12C. For example, EN4-7D does not utilise the word ‘empathy’ in the phrasing of the outcome, but in the expanded content descriptor, there is an expectation for students to “explain and justify personal empathy, sympathy and antipathy toward characters, situations and concerns depicted in texts” New South Wales Education Standards Authority (NESA, 2012, p. 133). The other content descriptors have a similar focus on applying empathy to understand texts, characters and authorial choices. However, in the Australian Curriculum’s General Capabilities, empathy is explicitly mentioned in three of them: Personal and Social Capability, Ethical Understanding, and Intercultural Understanding. While NSW teachers often prioritise the outcomes in the NSW English Syllabus, they are also required to address the General Capabilities and Cross-Curriculum Priorities within Australian Curriculum. Thus, educators prioritised teaching for empathy over teaching about empathy based on the way they interpreted the mandated curriculum and student learning outcomes.

In light of this, it is important to consider the significance of teaching about empathy, as well as teaching with and for it. Research suggests that teaching about empathy enables the transference of empathy skills into new contexts (Cooper, 2011), negates the possibility of students inappropriately ‘identifying’ with the experiences of others and ensures young people understand the limitations and dangers of empathy (Mirra, 2018). This becomes increasingly significant when taking into account the texts and content that focal participants were exploring in empathy-related units. While most of this study’s participants outlined text selections that aligned with the Australian Cross-Curriculum Priorities Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) 2016, the common thread amongst them was that teachers taught them with a focus on empathy related to racism, refugee experiences, and Indigenous experiences of discrimination. Of the remaining texts mentioned, themes related to socioeconomic status, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity were notably absent, either from the texts themselves or the lens through which they were studied with students. Instead, these texts focused on broader themes, such as power, sustainability, identity, and relationships. Prior literature suggests the importance of representation in educational contexts in order for students to appreciate, understand, and respect difference and diversity as well as cultivate empathetic concern (Curwood & Gibbons, 2009), including in relation to the Cross-Curriculum Priorities (Curwood & Gauci, 2020; Gauci & Curwood, 2017). Because English educators play a role in selecting and teaching texts through certain lenses, it is important to examine who they implicitly and explicitly encourage empathy for, and how policy design can influence these choices. When specific groups may be excluded or narrowly represented, as in the case of this study’s participants, the need to teach about empathy becomes more significant.

Participants repeatedly highlighted the relevance and salience of their school’s geographical context as an influencing factor on the way that empathy is framed and enacted within the classroom and across the school. Teachers were conscientious of how they approached certain issues given the demographics of their school, but overwhelmingly commented on their school’s geographic location above other factors such as gender, age, and socioeconomic status. For instance, in Henry’s rural school, the livelihood of many students was inextricably linked to the environment, and he incorporated discussions of drought into his classroom. Meanwhile, Betty taught in a community ravaged by recent bushfires, which saw many students displaced or traumatised. Such examples underpin the importance of situated learning and teaching about empathy in order to address concerns about ‘echo chamber’ empathy that sees students develop empathy disproportionately for ‘in group’ members, those already like themselves, and thus decentring the goal of a more critical and meaningful empathy wherein it is practised discerningly and for those unlike ourselves, as outlined in prior scholarship (Mirra, 2018; O’Grady, 2020; Schey & Blackburn, 2019; Weisz & Zaki, 2017).

Teaching about empathy is a way to encourage students to practise and apply empathy in ways that are discerning, aware of their own social position and privilege, and encourage social action rather than developing performative or passive empathy. The benefits of teaching about empathy align with national goals for education (Education Council, 2019) and current and incoming curriculum requirements (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2016; New South Wales Education Standards Authority (NESA), 2012; 2022). Our study suggests that the absence of teaching about empathy is related primarily to teachers’ interpretation of the syllabus, which may be left largely open. This absence from current praxis, seemingly resultant from the lack of specificity in the syllabus, suggests a problematic enactment of empathy education in Australian schools. Given the more recent exacerbation of demands on teachers in light of teacher shortages in New South Wales, the capacity for educators to prioritise this type of teaching focus may be further limited.

5 Conclusions and future directions

Teaching with empathy is an inherent part of teacher practice, both in everyday educational contexts and in times of chaos and crisis. While teaching for empathy is considered vital by most participants, both as an educational priority and for engagement in learning, it is not prioritised in the context of other schooling demands. Teaching about empathy is limited in current English educators’ praxis, suggesting that this can be emphasised more in teacher training, ongoing professional learning, government policies, and relevant curriculum documentation and design. Importantly, while teacher beliefs and values are integral to how they include empathy in their classrooms, decisions about enacting practice are heavily driven by the significant demands of the state and national curriculum. The pedagogical implications of this study for educators are clear: Teaching with, for, and about empathy has value in student learning and the functioning of schools, and should be enacted and encouraged.

Our findings suggest a need to critically consider teachers’ meaning making practices related to the current New South Wales K-10 English syllabus as well as the syllabus’ focus itself. Notably, the 2024 Curriculum Reform sees a revision of English syllabus outcomes. Similarly to the current syllabus, the term ‘empathy’ is still not explicitly included in outcome phrasing, but is mentioned in one content descriptor, with EN4-RVL-01 requiring students to demonstrate skills in “identifying and articulating how the opinions, motivations and choices of characters in fiction evoke empathy, sympathy, antipathy and identification” (New South Wales Education Standards Authority (NESA), 2022).

Pandemic-related remote learning inhibited participants’ and the researchers’ access to school-based data, such as lesson plans, observations of classroom practice, and interviews with students, meaning this data could not be collected and examined in the research timeframe. Further, the unexpected shift to remote learning in 2020 forced significant deviation from this projects’ initial design as an ethnographic case study within a classroom context that would involve this type of rigorous data collection. Therefore, this is a recommended future research direction to bolster understandings of empathy in English education and enhance the relevance and applicability of this study’s findings.

In the context of today’s world, it has never been clearer that empathy plays a significant role in learning and teaching. In the wake of global crises, and in the face of a declining empathy ‘pandemic’, we need to find more room for empathy in education and develop frameworks underpinned by empathy in praxis. As Valerie, an English teacher with four decades of teaching experience, stated, “Seize the day. Grab the moment where COVID is teaching us. It's teaching us about ourselves, it's teaching us about our world, our society. It's teaching us things that perhaps we can work on, when things get back to some sense of normality.”