Recently, I revisited the book Empathic Intelligence: Teaching, Learning, Relating by the academic Roslyn Arnold – a lecturer I was privileged to encounter in 1972 when I began my tertiary studies at the University of Sydney. I remember meeting her again some forty years later, and thanking her for her passion, her wisdom, and her kindness. I told her what a profound effect she had had on me all those years ago and how her care of students and her love for the subject English encouraged me to see teaching as a vocation.

After my second reading of Arnold’s book, I would like to share with you some of the ‘magic grabs’ I found to be particularly helpful. Firstly, that ‘caring is the bedrock of all successful education.’ Arnold argues that students feel ‘emotionally met’ and able to perform at their best when teachers care about them and are able to communicate this care during the process of the teaching interaction. As well as this fundamental point of having empathy with the learner, Arnold prizes other important attributes such as humour, effective management skills, and high expectation of students. 

Arnold suggests that empathic intelligence is important in teaching because it recognises that the critical lessons of life involve much more than the ability to know and to understand. An empathically intelligent educator seeks to promote curiosity, imagination, and sensitivity towards self, others, and the wider world. They value the processes of learning as much as the products. They start with a focus on what students can do rather than what they cannot do, recognising the importance of mobilising hope, along with accessing students’ tacit, unconscious abilities. And finally, they model perseverance as a necessary and achievable part of human development. All these aspects of quality teaching and learning are particularly timely as our Year 12 students receive their Trial HSC results. In considering the feedback given by their teachers to promote further learning in preparation for the final HSC examinations, hope and perseverance are the two key messages here.

Clare Murphy

English Coordinator and Literacy Instructional Coach