Philosophy: How does empathy help us to understand others?

Suitable for 14-19-year olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 philosophy and psychology.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Professor Thomas Schramme at the University of Liverpool, UK. As a philosopher, he is investigating the relationship between empathy and interpersonal understanding to discover how we can better understand each other.

• This resource also contains an interview with Thomas. If your students have questions for Thomas, they can send them to him online. All they need to do is to go to the article online (see the Futurum link below), scroll down to the end and type in the question(s). Thomas will reply!

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Thomas’s research and challenges them to consider their own skills in empathy. How could they improve these skills to become a better empathiser?

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

If you like these free resources – or have suggestions for improvements –, please let us know and leave us some feedback. Thank you!