Educating for Empathy: Literacy Learning and Civic Engagement

Recipient of the 2019 NCTE David H. Russell Award

Educating for Empathy presents a compelling framework for thinking about the purpose and practice of literacy education in a politically polarized world. Mirra proposes a model of critical civic empathy that encourages secondary ELA teachers to consider how issues of power and inequity play out in the literacy classroom and how to envision literacy practices as a means of civic engagement. The book reviews core elements of ELA instruction--response to literature, classroom discussion, research, and digital literacy--and demonstrates how these activities can be adapted to foster critical thinking and empathetic perspectives among students. Chapters depict teachers and students engaging in this transformative learning, offer concrete strategies for the classroom, and pose questions to guide school communities in collaborative reflection.

Book Features:

• Responds to our current, divisive political climate to explore what empathy really means and what it takes to teach for it.
• Explores an innovative concept of critical civic empathy that goes beyond simply being nice to others and emphasizes making positive changes in government and society.
• Provides an engaging synthesis of theory and practice that shows how foundational ELA activities can be used to support the development of empathy and civic engagement.
• Focuses on both personal empathy (seeing other points of view) and global empathy (understanding the power of position and privilege in social interactions).
• Includes real-world examples from a variety of schools and discussion questions at the end of each chapter.

Nicole Mirra is an assistant professor of urban teacher education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Graduate School of Education.