Empathy: An Overlooked 21st Century Skill

Recently I was reflecting on the skills we want our kids to possess as they enter adulthood and participate actively as g/local citizens. Here are two major skill sets defined by Henry Jenkins, et al., and Tony Wagner:

Jenkins, et al. (2006) 21st Century Skills (pdf)

• Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
• Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
• Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
• Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
• Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
• Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
• Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
• Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
• Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
• Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
• Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

Tony Wagner’s seven survival skills

• Critical thinking and problem solving
• Collaboration and leading by influence
• Agility and adaptability
• Initiative and entrepreneurial-ism
• Effective oral and written communication
• Accessing and analyzing information
• Curiosity and imagination

As I look over these lists, I noticed one important skill was missing: empathy.

Empathy can be defined as “a sense of shared experience, including emotional and physical feelings, with someone or something other than oneself.” This is an important skill to posses as it permits us to work toward understanding perspectives and points of view different from our own. Empathy is an important social and emotional skill that requires us to practice listening, another important skill that can be easily overlooked as well. Empathy is also a function of cognitive maturity; that is, the ability to take another’s point of view requires a certain degree of cognitive complexity. In this sense, perhaps empathy falls under discernment wherein we learn how to detect feelings, ideas, sensations with our senses.

In look back over distance education literature, Holmberg (1996) noted what he called “the empathy approach.” Through empathy Holmberg suggests that “feelings of personal relations between student and teacher promote motivation, study pleasure and effectiveness” (Holmberg, 1996, p. 489). Such relations Holmberg insists involve a personal style of presentation by the teacher that engages students emotionally, asking them to share their personal reactions, views and experiences. Similarly, in Daniel Goleman‘s (1995) work on emotional intelligence, empathy is defined as a critical facet of social awareness and a key component to an overall feeling of success in life.

In light of such examinations, I feel that we should consider including empathy in our list of 21st century skills as a distinct category. Goleman’s (1995) research suggests that empathy is positively related to intrinsic motivation and effective problem-solving. The need for empathy is increasingly important in the workplace where teamwork and social competencies are a critical factor in success. Similarly, globalization, and the challenges associated with intercultural relationships, make empathy a important managerial competence.

References:
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York, NY: Bantam Books.

Holmberg, B. (1996). On the potential of distance education in the Age of Information Technology. Journal of Universal Computer Science, 2(6): 484-491.

Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, Robison, A. J., & Weigel, M. (2006). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. Retrieved from http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF

Wagner, T. (2009). The global achievement gap : why even our best schools don’t teach the new survival skills our children need–and what we can do about it. New York, NY: Basic Books.

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