Is there a relationship between peertutoring and empathy

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Is there a relationship between peer-tutoring and
empathy?

• Dr. Richard Remedios
• (School of Education, Durham University)
• Dr. Allen Thurstone
• (Stirling Institute of Education, University of
  Stirling)

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Structure of talk

• What is Empathy?
• How did we measure Empathy?
• How can you measure the quality of peer-tutoring?
• Methodology used in our research
• Findings, conclusions and final thoughts.

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Empathy
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Components of empathy

• Just a cognitive skill? the apprehension of
  anothers condition or states of mind without
  actually experiencing that persons feelings
  (Hogan, 1969).
• Empathy can be defined as an affective trait e.g.
  the capacity to experience the emotions of
  another (Bryant, 1982)
• Mehrabian and Epstein (1972) see empathy as the
  tendency to respond emotionally to the
  experiences of others.

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What is Empathy?

• Empathy is a psychological phenomenon.
• People vary in the level and type of empathy they
  have.
• Empathy should be seen as a skill, not just an
  automatic feature of perception.

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Empathy and peer-tutoring

• If empathy does involve the ability to understand
  what someone else is thinking and feeling, and
  peer-tutoring involves trying to explain
  something to someone else, then theoretically the
  more empathic the peer tutor, the better their
  quality of peer-tutoring.

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Empathy questions
Some questions about you We would like to know a
little bit about your thoughts and feelings.
There are no right or wrong answers, just put a
tick in the box under the number that describes
you the best.
Perspective taking
Empathic concern
Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual
differences in empathy Evidence for a
multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 44, 113126.
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How do you assess quality of peer-tutoring?
Observe pupil-pupil dyads
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Methodology

• Seventy-three randomly-selected tutors who had
  been trained in tutoring techniques were observed
  with their tutees three times in a normal
  classroom reading lesson.
• Each tutor-tutee dyad selected for observation
  was observed using a time frame sampling
  technique.
• Each pair was observed undertaking paired reading
  during three windows by the same researcher.

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Instructions to observers

• Time sample observation schedule
• Observe pair 1 for two minutes and record
  behaviours within the observation window.
• Next observe pair 2 for two minutes and record
  behaviours within the observation window.
• Next observe pair 3 for two minutes and record
  behaviours within the observation window.
• Now observe pair 1 again, followed by pair 2 then
  pair 3 for the second observation window.
• Repeat the sequence for the third observation
  window.

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Section from observation sheet
Paired Reading Observation Schedule Pair 1 (Top)
Unless otherwise stated please tally number of
times behaviour observed. In some cases a
behaviour must be observed for other behaviours
to be observed, e.g. Mistake Made, Reading Alone.
Even if this behaviour is observed, other
behaviours in this section might not follow.
Keep the observations in vertical lines to
reflect this.
Unless otherwise stated please tally number of
times behaviour observed. In some cases a
behaviour must be observed fo
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Research questions Hypotheses
Research questions Do pupils' scores on Davis's
Reactivity Index for the constructs of Empathic
Concern (EC) and Perspective Taking (PT) relate
to their performance as a peer-tutor?
Hypothesis  Scores for EC and PT should
positively correlate with measures of
peer-tutoring performance.
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Findings

• The results revealed significant positive
  relationships between empathic concern and total
  praise (n73, r.27, plt.001) and perspective
  taking and total praise (n73, r.31, plt.001).

However, there was no relationship between
instances of paired-reading together and empathic
concern (n73, r.03, n.s.) nor for instances of
paired-reading together and perspective taking
(n73, r.03, n.s).
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Conclusions
There is suggestive evidence that empathy may be
a useful correlate of successful peer-tutoring
and more specifically, that praise may be a key
predictive component of empathic tutoring.
Although many studies have shown the overall
positive effects of peer-tutoring
(Ginsburgh-Block et al., 2006), it is still
unclear whether some individuals may be better
candidates as peer tutors. Given that empathy is
trait-like, the evidence from this study suggests
that assessing individuals level of empathy
prior to implementing peer-tutoring protocols may
result in producing a more effective pool of
peer-tutors.
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Final thoughts
Although we do it without thinking about it,
there is probably a wider range in empathic
abilities than we intuitively think there is.
Maybe Empathy is actually related to not only
quality of peer-tutoring, it may be a key
component in becoming a successful teacher.
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References

• Bryant, B. K. (1982). An index of empathy for
  children and adolescents. Child Development, 53,
  413425
• Davis, M. H. (1980). A multidimensional approach
  to individual differences in empathy. JSAS
  Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 10,
  85.
• Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual
  differences in empathy Evidence for a
  multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality
  and Social Psychology, 44, 113126.
• Ginsburgh-Block, M.D., Rohrbeck, C.A. Fantuzzo,
  J. (2006). A meta-analytic review of social,
  self-concept, and behavioural outcomes of
  peer-assisted learning. Journal of Educational
  Psychology, 98(4), 732-749.
• Hogan, R. (1969). Development of an empathy
  scale. Journal of Consulting and Clinical
  Psychology, 33, 307316.
• Lawrence, E. J. Shaw, P. Baker, D. Baron-Cohen S.
  David, A. S. (2004) Measuring empathy
  reliability and validityof the Empathy Quotient.
  Psychological Medicine, 34, 911924.
• Mehrabian, A., Epstein, N. (1972). A measure of
  emotional empathy. Journal of Personality, 40,
  525543.

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Any questions?