Empathy: concept, confusion and consequences in a national curriculum

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Abstract
Promoting empathy is the concern of a number of parts of the Curriculum 5‐16. However, the concept was hazy from its inception, has not been clarified by psychologists’ empirical researches and remains ambiguous as it is used in one school subject, history. Here the concept is shown to impede planning, teaching and assessment. A differentiated view of understanding people in the past is preferred. It is argued that the promise of the National Curriculum will not materialise if its development is based upon logically‐derived assumptions about how children should be reasoning rather than upon psychologically grounded evidence about how they do reason.

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