Empathic Communities: Educating for Justice

by Johanna Selles, Margaret Farley (Foreword)

Empathy is generally considered a useful skill for professional students in the helping professions, such as medicine, nursing, teaching, and clergy. This book examines the pedagogical and curricular implications of educating for empathy. Empathy is described as consisting of both cognitive and affective elements. Students may demonstrate empathic abilities on a continuum from an empathic deficit to empathic overload. Mentoring, reflection, journaling, and an understanding of spiritual formation can be helpful to professional students in learning how to engage empathy. For both the professional and the client, empathy can enhance the encounter and the professional relationship. Building on the inherent potential for relationality, professionals engaging empathy bring respectful humility into their encounters that can facilitate intercultural understanding in a diversifying and complex world.

190 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2011

About the author

Retired from a teaching position at Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, Johanna is now a full-time writer. She has worked as an R.N. in a variety of settings including Yale School of Nursing, Yale School of Medicine, Connecticut Hospice, Boston University, and various hospitals in Ontario.
Her doctoral work at OISE/University of Toronto examined Methodist-sponsored schooling for women in Ontario. She recently completed the Certificate in Creative Writing sponsored by the School of Continuing Education at the University of Toronto. In past years, she has attended writer's workshops in various locations such as the Glen Workshop in Santa Fe, N.M., Humber College, Baxter Workshop, and Amherst, MA.