At our predominantly white university, students often shy away from controversial conversations. How can the classroom encourage students to value and engage in potentially explosive conversations? We develop a concept of "empathic scaffolding" to articulate an approach that integrates diversity and inclusion into the classroom. Empathic…

Role-play, in which learners act out roles in case scenarios, appears to be used across a broad range of discipline areas to address learning across the cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains. This paper describes the development of a prospective typology of role-play learning opportunities derived from role-play scenarios used at one large…

To encourage students to think about and understand the considerable role gender plays in their lives, a writing assignment early in a gender course asks them to consider the impact of permanently becoming the other gender. Students' papers were examined for particular themes, which were used to illustrate course concepts and to spark class…

As university educators, we need to prepare students for the transition from the information age to what Daniel H. Pink (2005) calls the conceptual age, which is governed by artistry, empathy and emotion, by including in the curricula activities that stimulate both hemispheres of the brain. This can be done by promoting activities that energize…

Describes two exercises in which undergraduates from abnormal psychology courses act as role-play clients for graduate counselor-trainees. Finds that the exercises seem to be educationally beneficial and may also help decrease undergraduates' negative stereotyping of persons with psychological problems. (KO)

In a study to test whether imagery accounts for the effects of empathy on attributions, it was determined that the imagery explanation of empathy effects was untenable and that the recall of perspective-relevant details was unlikely to mediate attributions of causality in imaginary scenarios. (Author/MH)

Discusses a means for increasing undergraduate and graduate students' level of empathy. Assigned students to write about and role play a character that they create who suffers from a psychological disorder. Explains that after quantitative and qualitative analyses it was demonstrated that students' empathy increased. (CMK)

Presents a teaching method for enhancing student awareness of social issues by developing student's ability to take the role of others. States that this process allows students to develop a sense of "other" as a social construction created by the dominant group. Recommends use of journals and primary sources. (KO)

Although the effectiveness of role play and its vicarious learning experiences for counselor training is well documented, little research has focused on the impact of the order of playing the roles on skill development. To investigate the effect of ordinal position, 36 beginning counseling students, 24 female and 12 male, with a median age of 30,…

Neophyte counselors trained in the use of their own imagery to practice counseling interviews were compared with an untrained group. Results indicated that the ability to discriminate differing levels of empathic responses, to evaluate one's own performance, and amount of preinterview confidence were higher for the mental practice group. (Author)

In a University of California continuing pharmacy education course in diabetes care, practicing pharmacists lived as patients with diabetes for two days and role-played in small groups. One year later, participants reported making changes in their diabetes care-related practice, suggesting its effectiveness in improving practitioners' skill…

Forty nonclinical psychology graduate students participated in brief small-group interchanges designed as psychotherapy analogues. The interaction was rated by trained judges, and the "clients" in the simulations also rated "therapist" empathy. The most powerful predictor of client-rated empathy was gender, with women receiving higher empathy…

Thirty-one prepracticum counselors were assigned randomly to two methods of confrontation skill training: (a) a cognitive self-instructional modeling group and (b) a discrimination/communication training group. The self-instructional group practiced aloud and, later silently, a set of questions designed to identify and to verbalize a discrepancy…

Empathy skill was operationalized using a videotape of client-worker interviews and a questionnaire. Two conditions for the development of empathy skill, (1) an experiential-didactic course, and (2) a structured meditation experience, are described. Positive change in scores was found with meditation attainment. Limitations and implications are…

Research suggests that observers of spouse abuse are likely to arrive at overly dispositional causal explanations for the abusive behavior, and reject both the abusing spouse and his victim. To examine observers' causal attributions and person perceptions under varying conditions, 160 college students read a vignette about an incident of spouse…