periences and negative feelings that can cause misbehavior and to sustain positive relationships when students misbehave," the study says. Teachers were reminded that "a teacher who makes his or her students feel heard, valued, and respected shows them that school is fair and they can grow and succeed there." These ideas were reinforced through stories from students (e.g., "One day I got detention, and instead of just sitting there, my teacher talked with me about what happened. He really listened to me. ... It felt good to know I had someone I could trust in school. ..."). Teachers then wrote how they incorporate or could incorporate these ideas in their own practice."
Teachers in the control group did a reading on using technology to promote learning.
Students in the group whose teachers received professional development on empathy were half as likely to be suspended over the course of the school year than students whose teachers were in the control group, the researchers found, and the differences remained significant after controlling for race, gender, and other factors. Overrall rates of suspension were 4.8 percent for students in the experimental group and 9.6 percent for students in the control group. From the study:
"Importantly, the empathic-mindset intervention did not attempt to teach teachers new skills for interacting with students or introduce new policies for how to discipline students. Nor did it attempt to build students' self-control or social-emotional skills, another common approach to improving student behavior. Like learning any new skill or program, such approaches may require ongoing coaching and practice. Instead, we assumed that teachers were capable of building better relationships with students and that students could behave more positively with more supportive treatment. The intervention simply encouraged teachers to view discipline as an opportunity to facilitate mutual understanding and better relationships and empowered teachers to do so in a manner effective for them and their students."
The intervention was built on the findings of two smaller experiments the researchers did that proved empathy changes teachers' responses and that students respond positively to the new classroom dynamic.
In one experiment, researchers found that teachers who read a brief article suggesting "good teacher-student relationships are critical for students to learn self-control" were more likely to show empathetic responses to students than teachers who read an article that suggested "punishment is critical for teachers to take control of a classroom." Teachers who read the first article were also less likely to label students as "trouble makers."
In a second experiment, researchers surveyed college students, asking them to imagine themselves as middle-school students who had disrupted class by repeatedly walking around to throw away trash. Their teacher responded by either assigning detention and referring them to the principal's office, a punitive response, or by asking them about their misbehavior and moving the wastebasket closer to their desk, an empathetic response. Survey respondents said they would respect the teacher with the empathetic response far more, and they also said they would feel more motivated to behave better in the future under empathetic conditions.
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