Perceived empathy of teachers and students’ metacognitive strategies

The aim of this research was to establish correlation between perceived empathy of teachers and students’ metacognitive strategies. To obtain a more comprehensive picture of this correlation, the aim was expanded to prediction of students’ metacognitive strategies based on components of teachers’ empathy. Teachers’ empathy was examined through presence of six different components: suffering, positive sharing, crying, emotional attention, feeling for others and identification, which were assessed by attribution theory. Students were the ones who evaluated teachers’ empathy. The following metacognitive strategies were explored: awareness of one’s own cognitive functioning, planning one’s own cognitive functioning and monitoring one’s own cognitive functioning. The research was conducted in two primary schools in the area of East Sarajevo on the sample of seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade students, which yielded a total of 665 students. The obtained results show that there is a correlation between all variables used to examine teachers’ empathy and all variables used to explore students’ metacognitive strategies. Teachers’ suffering, as one of the components of teachers’ empathy, figures as an important predictor of metacognitive strategies as criterion variables. When it comes to development of metacognitive strategies, students preferred a positive attitude of teachers towards them, based on cognitive and affective balance. Since empathy plays an important role in application of learning strategies and promoting positive behaviour such as interpersonal understanding, helping others and inhibition of anti-social behaviour, empathy skills training should become an integral part of teacher education programmes. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179020: Koncepcije i strategije obezbe ivanja kvaliteta bazi nog obrazovanja i vaspitanja]