Design Principles for Promoting Intergroup Empathy in Online Environments

This study examined a professional development program designed to support civics teachers in their efforts to promote empathy towards Arabs among Jewish students in Israel. The design rationale for the program is that teachers should experience empathic processes themselves, before supporting their students in such an endeavor, and that meaningful empathic processes can occur online, if activities are properly designed. Furthermore, all stages of the program were designed to support teachers to be part of an online learning community. Sixty Jewish teachers participated in two iterations of the design; refinements were made in the second enactment to provide teachers with explicit definitions of empathy and specific instructions for reflection. Findings indicate that these changes were reflected in teachers' higher degrees of empathic responses. Teachers also indicated the contribution of being a part of an online learning community to the learning process they experienced during the program. We interpret this as a first step in enabling teachers to assist their students to develop a more empathic approach toward the minority group and conclude with design-principles . (מתוך המאמר‎)