When seeing through students’ eyes clouds the view: Rethinking perspective-taking in teacher-focused interventions

It is widely believed that teachers’ perspective-taking can improve students’ social-emotional learning (SEL) and their own social-emotional competencies by fostering a deeper understanding of students’ thoughts, feelings, or viewpoints. It is therefore not surprising that perspective-taking is usually one of the key components in teacher-focused interventions designed to improve various SEL outcomes. Drawing together insights from empirical and theoretical work, this paper focuses on how perspective-taking is embedded in teacher-focused interventions designed to support SEL, and identifies three boundary conditions that may inadvertently limit its effectiveness. These include teachers’ reliance on egocentric and stereotypical defaults when trying to take a student’s perspective, a predominant focus on the perspective taker’s mind when considering intervention outcomes, and potential declines in teachers’ perspective-taking accuracy due to increased confidence. By identifying these boundary conditions, this paper aims to advance a more nuanced understanding of perspective-taking as a mechanism of change and to inform the development of interventions that more effectively foster SEL outcomes. This paper reviews how perspective-taking is embedded in teacher-focused interventions designed to support social and emotional learning (SEL), and identifies three conditions that may limit its effectiveness. Drawing together insights from empirical and theoretical work, it offers a more nuanced account of perspective-taking as a mechanism of change. The insights provided may help educators and intervention designers anticipate challenges and strengthen strategies that reliably support SEL outcomes in the classroom.