Value potential of pedagogical tasks and pedagogical situations as a means of developing 
empathy in future primary school teachers

The author of the article considers empathy – conscious empathy with the current emotional state of another person without losing the sense of the origin of this experience – as a professionally and personally significant quality of a primary school teacher. According to the author, the means of forming this quality in the conditions of training in an educational institution of higher pedagogical education are pedagogical tasks and pedagogical situations taken from the practice of teachers or specially formulated, as well as described in artistic and pedagogical works studied by students in the process of mastering such disciplines as «Didactics of primary school», «Theory and practice of education and training of younger students», «Pedagogical skill». The text of the article presents the content of such tasks and situations.