A STUDY OF THE IMPACT OF DEBATE ON EMPATHY AMONG STUDENT TEACHERS.

Empathy is an essential attribute for all teachers to be effective in class. An empathic teacher is able to relate
with the difficulties and challenges that learners face, exhibit patience in resolving them, is able to listen
actively and in a non-judgemental manner to her student. She will thus be able to enable a non-threatening and
congenial atmosphere for learning. Debate as a strategy for learning can enable the participants to look at the
multiple perspectives around a proposition and build their arguments. A debator while preparing for the debate
normally puts herself in the shoes of the opposition and builds one's own defence and arguments. A question
arose in the mind of the researcher, whether participating in debates will also help increase the level of empathy
among the learners? Will it increase their ability to understand another person's circumstances, point of view,
thoughts, and feelings? To seek answers to these questions, an experimental study was carried out where a
module of debate was used to teach topics of the course Educational Management in the one-year B.Ed. course
and the researcher made a tool on Empathy was administered to the students. The sample was divided into two
categories on the basis of age, i) 21 to 30 years and ii) 31 to 40 years The pre-test and post test scores were
compared to see if the debates had an impact on Empathy of the students' teachers. The post test of the
experimental group showed a decrease in the scores of Empathy in the 21 to 30 years age group.