Rejoinder to The Role of Empathy in Teaching Culturally Diverse Students: A Qualitative Study of Teachers’ Beliefs

Across 20 years, I have traveled geographically, philosophically, and pedagogically since the publication of the original article. I currently live and work on Indigenous lands that have experienced settler colonialism for over a century. My work as a teacher educator over the last 20 years has been to honor this past and its present by striving to address settler colonialism, racism, and oppression in my teaching. This context varies greatly from that of the article, a study of predominately Black teachers in a large southeastern city. At the time of the writing of this article, I was a recently minted PhD who had learned a lot about racism, the south, and my own whiteness but had not become aware of the concept of settler colonialism. I had framed much of my work through an intercultural and cross-cultural lens predominately while also engaging in anti-racist work. After being in the southwest for more than 20 years, my understanding of settler colonialism has increased and influenced my instructional and curricular approaches. Context matters. Not only has mine changed, but so has the context of teaching.

Teachers are facing a much different and more complex context than we did during the writing of this article. Various stakeholders ask of and expect teachers to address competing priorities such as improving learning outcomes among all students, differentiating and personalizing learning while often being asked to teach with prescribed curricula and standardization that do not leave space for differentiation; attending to the social-emotional needs of their students, which have escalated since the pandemic; and completing increasing amounts of paperwork. All of this being requested with fewer support and resources. In addition, this work is done in fraught and tense political contexts with teachers having to look over their shoulders.

In response to this changing context over the decades, we teacher educators have continued to implement and research instructional approaches and strategies that will help our candidates, who still are predominately White women, be more effective with their students. Within this research, empathy has persisted as a line of investigation. This construct, which involves perspective-taking and caring, has garnered research in peer-reviewed articles that have quadrupled in size over the last two decades. A welcome shift has manifested with a more critical framing of the concepts of empathy. The critique of false empathy, which we spoke to in our original article, has been adeptly brought forward more clearly. False empathy can be particularly problematic for our candidates and teachers who make assumptions that they think they know and understand the realities of their students, but in actuality they do not, leading to practices that are inauthentic and not supportive of their students. I would label these empathies as inauthentic.

These inauthentic empathies have led and continue to lead to well-intentioned women who do not address the structural forces of inequitable schooling such as programs, content, and approaches that still privilege whiteness while often trivializing “otherness.” The bringing forth of “False empathy” and its dangers have been enhanced with more recent work examining the notion of “being nice” (Castagno, 2019). This notion is whiteness in action, as teachers and teacher educators state their attempts to be critical and anti-racist, but in actuality do not engage at the difficult levels due to fear of conflict, cognitive dissonance, and disrupting relationships and work and learning environments. It is easier to just be nice. Colorblindness supports this concept as we strive to “just get along.” These concepts point out the continuous challenge of conducting anti-racist and decolonization within teacher education and moreover in higher education.

My hope, though naive, with my dissertation was that my work would make some impact on fostering more effective teacher education and, more importantly, fostering more equitable schooling for all students. But despite my own work and this more critical framing of empathy in particular, we are still in a similar place as 20 years ago—with unequal learning outcomes along racial, linguistic, and socioeconomic status (SES) lines, as well as inhospitable and sometimes dangerous learning contexts for students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI), students of color, and students with disabilities.

So, what do we do? How do we continue? I have hope. As I write this, my predominately White teacher candidates are engaging in Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s book, An Indigenous People’s History of the United States for young people, and applying it to their future social studies practices. This is one of my attempts to address settler colonialism in my teaching. Their engagement and excitement to read and think about this history, though admittedly difficult, gives me hope. This generation is aware of the global challenges such as climate change, political tensions, injustice, and poverty, facing them as they begin their journeys as teachers and yet they enthusiastically engage in this underpaid, overworked vocation. I have hope. I have hope as colleagues with whom I work are publishing new ways to consider teacher education that brings forth indigenous epistemologies and voices. I feel pushed and inspired as I have the privilege to walk with my colleagues fighting for justice in their teaching, research, and everyday lives. I have hope. I draw upon Chevare Warren, an empathy researcher who asks for us to reframe research and perspectives on Black boys “lead with possibilities, rather than problems” (Warren, 2021). I have hope.