What is the Point of Empathy? A Call for Critical Empathy in Noticing Emotions for Equity in Response to Patterson Williams and Sheth
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7167255 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nicole Louie (0000-0001-6080-325X, Department of Curriculum and Instruction University of Wisconsin‐Madison Madison Wisconsin US, corresponding author), Grace Wan‐Yue Zhan (Graduate Institute of Science Education National Taiwan Normal University Taipei City Taiwan), Amanda Coviello (Department of Curriculum and Instruction University of Wisconsin‐Madison Madison Wisconsin US) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 110 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 26-32 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0036-8326 • E-ISSN: 1098-237X |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1002/sce.21986 |
| OpenAlex | W4410891534 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 35 |
As part of the special issue, Centering Affect and Emotion Toward Justice and Dignity in Science Education, this commentary responds to Alexis Patterson Williams and Manali Sheth's paper, “Cultivating Inner Witnesses Attuned to the Emotional Experiences of Students of Color in Science.” We articulate critical empathy as an emergent set of concrete practices for researchers, teachers, and others to consider, grounded in a deep curiosity about our own and others' emotional experiences and in a steadfast commitment to collective action toward more just and humanizing science education. We offer several suggestions for enacting critical empathy in work on noticing emotions in science education: (1) Reflect on one's own emotions and positionality; (2) Attend to students' and teachers' emotions; (3) Build on emotions as incitements to redress inequities at interpersonal and systemic levels; (4) Illuminate and disrupt dehumanizing emotional rules and politics of affect; and (5) Resist the reduction of emotions and the noticing of emotions to measurable quantities and “best practices,” and instead work to support messy learning in all its complexity. We argue that attuning to the emotions of students of color in humanizing ways requires not only addressing individual teachers' knowledge, skills, and dispositions but also systemic changes to teacher education, science education, and schooling more broadly
Cognitive psychology · Empathy · Equity (law) · Political science · Communication in Education and Healthcare · Critical Race Theory in Education · Psychology · Social Psychology
Bad Boys
Making sense of the complex entanglement between emotion and pedagogy
Teacher Vulnerability
How Do Teachers Manage to Teach? Perspectives on Problems in Practice
Rehumanizing the Other
Whiteness as Technology of Affect
Healing-Centered Educator Activism in Mathematics Actualized by Women of Color Mathematics Teacher Activists
Learning and constructions of us and them in teachers’ collaborative groups
“School’s a Lie”
Sylvia Wynter, racialized affects, and minor feelings
Toward radical belonging
Toward a teacher solidarity lens
Critical race reflections
Getting to the heart of the matter
Behind School Doors
True Grit? Making a Scientific Object and Pedagogical Tool
Critical empathy
Discursive practices, genealogies, and emotional rules
Cultural processes in science education
Beyond the Methods Fetish
"Making Justice Peripheral by Constructing Practice as "Core
What Feels More Than Feeling
| Citations per year | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |