Empathy is the capacity to recognise or understand another's state of mind or emotion. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes", or to in some way experience the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself. It may be described metaphorically as an emotional kind of resonance or mirroring.
An important target by the method Learning by teaching is to train systematically and in each lesson the students-empathy. They have to transmit new contents to the classmates, so they have to reflect continuously on the mental processes by the other students in the classroom. This way - in addition - it is possible to develop step by step the students-feeling for group-reactions and networking.
=> Empathy-English version
=> Empathy - Spanish versionBy the age of 2, children normally begin to display the fundamental behaviors of empathy by having an emotional response that corresponds with another person. Even earlier, at one year of age, infants have some rudiments of empathy, in the sense that they understand that, just like their own actions, other people's actions have goals. Sometimes, toddlers will comfort others or show concern for them as early as 24 months of age. Also during the second year, toddlers will play games of falsehood or "pretend" in an effort to fool others, and this requires that the child know what others believe before he or she can manipulate those beliefs (Feldman, 1997).
Cartoons can be a good mean for children to reflect about empathy. First they listen an look to the story, then we talk about it through questions about the feelings and the empathy.
