Mid Sweden University

Today’s society is characterized by diversity among students. In school students with different backgrounds, from different cultures and with different ambitions meet each other. Through increased awareness of diversity, we believe that teachers can choose more consciously how to meet and promote student’s diversity in the classroom. Diversity awareness is much about understanding oneself, what prejudices I have, and where this prejudice comes from. To understand and meet other people, you must first understand and meet yourself, your values and your preconceived notions. Further, it is also essential to talk about diversity, norms and privilege in schools and societies. This is one of the reasons to work on increasing curiosity about others. Being curious about others is one of the cornerstones for gaining an increased understanding of other people, their values and actions. We believe that being empathetically curious about yourself and others and willing to work to develop this curiosity is crucial for the program. The HAND IN HAND: Empowering teachers program should be understood as a tool for teachers, when reflecting on their teaching from the perspective of diversity awareness. The concept of empathic curiosity, within the program, is used as a tool to better understand others, in the society and in the classroom. Programs aimed at embracing diversity benefit by working closely with perspective taking and empathic concern of others (Miklokowska, 2018). Empathic curiosity can be directed towards ourselves, towards people in our vicinity or unknown people we meet. Further, empathic curiosity defined by Mattson(2020) means identifying with the needs of other people by trying to understand or perceiving them. Empathic curiosity can be described as a combination of empathic dialogue and empathic listening (Gøtzsche et al., 2022). The HAND IN HAND: Empowering teachers program contains several elements where empathic curiosity is practised. Examples of such elements are empathic dialogue exercises where empathic listening and empathic questioning are practiced. Through exercises designed to practice empathic listening in order to understand another person, teachers in the program practice their ability to listen empathetically, which is part of empathic curiosity. Result from focus group discussions with 120 teachers in Sweden will be presented at the symposium. The topic of the focus group discussions concerned how teachers perceive that empathic curiosity can serve as a tool to embrace diversity in today's classrooms.References 

Gøtzsche, K, Berg Nielsen, H, Dahlström, H, Norberg, M, Eliasson, E, Oskarsson, M, Wiklund Lind, G (2023). Draft. Hand:et: – A training programme to develop SEDA competences in teachers and other school staff Mattsson, C. (2019). Empatisk nyfikenhet – att bemöta intolerans, hat och extremism i klassrummet. Dembra. (2), 24-33. (In Swedish) downloaded 2019-11-18 from https://gup.ub.gu.se/publication/279238 Miklikowska M. Empathy trumps prejudice: The longitudinal relation between empathy and anti-immigrant attitudes in adolescence. Dev Psychol. 2018 Apr;54(4):703-717. doi: 10.1037/dev0000474. Epub 2017 Dec 14. PMID: 29239638.