Empathy Building in HE: pedagogical practices to foster communication, listening skills and perspective taking

This article presents an academic practice involving university students who were taking a module in which story exchanges were used as a methodology to build empathy and foster communication, listening skills and perspective taking. Following a brief literature review, the article describes the activities and the pedagogy that were followed in the undergraduate module to start building empathy and connectedness among students, as well as the research methodology employed. Data collection consisted of a questionnaire distributed among all students and the reflective essays of the volunteered story exchange participants. Mixed methods were used for the analysis, following grounded theory approach for the qualitative data. The results show how during the story exchange interactions among participants, information and emotions were exchanged, and processes regarding empathy building, development of transversal skills and connectedness took place. The experience was perceived by students as transformational and empowering. The article closes with some conclusions and recommendations to inform future pedagogical practices aiming at fostering empathy among Higher Education learners through story exchange.