Students' perspectives on their high school experience

This study explored students' levels of belonging and engagement in high school by obtaining their perspectives on the instruction, teachers, friends, and activities in their school. We interviewed 33 students from seven comprehensive high schools in Richmond, Virginia. Students indicated that they were more engaged when the instructional program included authentic learning experiences, teachers who provided challenging activities and showed interest in student learning, and a school day that supported interpersonal relationships with peers and adults. It was concluded that, to promote belonging and engagement, school personnel should attend to the quality of student learning and relationships.     

Can empathy close the racial divide and gender gap in death penalty support?

Public opinion data indicate that the majority of US respondents support the death penalty. Research has consistently indicated, however, that Blacks and females are significantly less likely to support capital punishment than their White and male counterparts. Past research efforts attempting to account for these differences have, at best, only partially accounted for them: the racial divide and gender gap in death penalty support, while narrowed, remained evident. This study proposes that empathy, particularly ethnocultural empathy, may be a key explanatory correlate of death penalty support and that racial and gender differences in empathy may fully explain the observed racial and gender differences in death penalty support. This study uses three forms of empathy measures (cognitive, affective, and ethnocultural) to test this hypothesis using survey data from a sample of undergraduate students. Our results show that neither a variety of other “known correlates” of death penalty support nor cognitive or affective empathy scales were able to fully account for the observed racial difference in death penalty support. Ethnocultural empathy, however, was successful in reducing the effect of race on death penalty support to nonsignificance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to have done so.     

“There’s Beauty in Brokenness”: Teaching Empathy Through Dialogue with Art

Empathy, a core element of helping skills training, is vital to the development of the therapeutic alliance and positive counseling outcomes. This article presents a classroom exercise developed to increase students’ empathy. The exercise features imaginative dialogue by members of a counselor education beginning skills class with art works in an exhibit curated by a museum educator. Presented are the details of the teaching exercise, student and faculty reflections on the exercise, and suggestions for further research.