Students Abroad Studying Their Own Thing

Abstract

This paper defines teacher empathy, argues that teacher empathy enhances student learning, and offers suggestions for increasing teacher empathy. Teacher empathy is the degree to which an instructor works to deeply understand students’ personal and social situations, to feel care and concern in response to students’ positive and negative emotions, and to respond compassionately without losing the focus on student learning. Teacher empathy is communicated to students through course policies as well as the instructor’s behavior toward students. To increase teacher empathy, we review non-pejorative explanations for undesirable student behavior (e.g., fear of failure), and we suggest ways in which faculty can learn about their students and can structure course policies to increase teacher empathy. Ultimately, we call for research on teacher empathy and student learning.     

Anatomical Sciences Education Vol. 5, Issue 3, 2012 Cover Image

Medical students at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada, learn clinical facts about the hepatobiliary system as transplant surgeon Dr. Vivian McAlister (at the far right) demonstrates Whipple's procedure in the anatomy laboratory. In this issue of ASE, Ullah and colleagues describe an extracurricular student initiative known as the Surgically Oriented Anatomy Program (SOAP), which aims to deliver anatomy teaching from a surgical perspective through the philosophy of “education through recreation”.     

The Role of Teacher Training in Cognitive Strategy Instruction to Improve Math Problem Solving

The purpose of this article is to offer teacher training and professional development recommendations in mathematics based on the findings of a federally funded 3‐year intervention study that improved the problem solving of middle school students with a focus on students with learning disabilities. Over the 3‐year project, 29 seventh and eighth grade teachers implemented a problem‐solving intervention based on cognitive strategy instruction. Though the intervention was successful in improving students’ problem‐solving performance, several issues related to teaching effectiveness and teacher training came to light. The article will: (1) describe the intervention and its implementation, (2) present the findings of the study, and (3) discuss the issues of effectiveness and possible solutions via teacher education and professional development.     

Attribution in the classroom: How just is the just world?

Research in the area of attribution theory is reviewed which documents the tendency to explain whatever happens to someone else as a just consequence of his own personal characteristics, rather than the result of environmental circumstances. The ramifications of this tendency in teachers' perceptions of students are discussed, and suggestions are offered for guarding against this sort of attributional bias.