Empathy in the teaching of history with special reference to Maltese adolescents

Abstract

Empathy is the power of projecting one's personality in the object of contemplation and "feeling into" the experience and emotions of others. This dissertation provides the reader with a theoretical description of both, empathy in general and empathy in history teaching. It also gives a picture of how the skill of empathy was slowly incorporated in the history syllabus in Britain and how it became the centre of a controversy between the two main history teaching approaches based on different ideologies. It explores the research undertaken by Peter Lee, a London University History senior lecturer, in which he analysed how British adolescents make sense of history. This is followed by an explanation of the five cognitive levels of empathetic understanding, which Lee devised according to his analysis of the students' empathetic thinking. The author undertook a local research/survey and both the pilot study and the case study can be seen on the videocassette provided. Its aim was to analyse whether Lee's levels corresponded or not to the levels of empathetic thinking of form four Maltese adolescents attending a specific Maltese Church-school. It also aims to evaluate if other possible levels or important considerations emerge from this case study. A detailed analysis of the case study transcripts was followed by an examination of the implications of the "findings" from this survey, for empathy in history teaching in Malta.