Open AccessEmpathy in Adult Education
Author(s) -
Natalija Vrečer
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
as. andragoška spoznanja/andragoška spoznanja
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2350-4188
pISSN - 1318-5160
DOI - 10.4312/as.21.3.65-73
Subject(s) - empathy , psychology , precondition , interpersonal communication , competence (human resources) , social psychology , lifelong learning , intercultural competence , interpersonal relationship , pedagogy , computer science , programming language
Empathy is an important part of emotional intelligence and the latter is crucial for human relations, whether they be interpersonal relations, relations among people at work, or in a wider community. Therefore, empathy is important for adult education, for guidance counsellors, and for other adult educators. Adult educators must be empathic in order to understand the perspectives and needs of the participants in the educational process and empathy is a precondition for understanding. The development of empathy as a competence is a lifelong learning process. Namely, despite some biological predispositions for empathy, the latter can be learnt. It is the contention of the article that empathy is one of the most important intercultural competencies, because if a person is not empathic, other intercultural competencies vary rarely cannot develop to their full extent. Thus empathy is a precondition for successful intercultural dialogue