Original Research
Development and Validation of the Language Teachers’ Empathy Skills Scale
- Abstract
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Understanding others’ feelings and thoughts and responding to them properly is called empathy and it is one of the fundamental features of language teachers. Despite the recognized significance of empathy in language teaching, there is currently a lack of a standardized scale to measure empathy skills specifically in the context of language education. Based on a sequential mixed methods design, at the first phase of the study a pool of 70 items was developed based on the literature. Expert views and face and content validity procedure reduced them to 23. A number of 255 English language teachers participated in the second phase of the study. Exploratory factor analysis was employed. Three sub constructs labeled as Emotional Attunement Skills, Active Listening Skill, and Perspective-taking Skill were found for the remaining 15 items. The findings revealed that the valid and reliable scale can be safely used to assess empathy skills.
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Keywords
Empathy Skills; Language Teachers; Validation; Scale Development
Author(s) Information
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their gratitude to the students and faculty of Azad University of Mashhad for their participation and support throughout this research.
Funding
This research received no external funding.
CRediT Authorship Contribution Statement
Zahra Zohoorian: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Writing - Original Draft
Mohammad Nikkhah: Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Writing - Original Draft
Nader Matinsadr: Formal Analysis, Validation, Writing – Review & Editing
Generative AI Use Disclosure Statement
AI tool was not used for generating research data, conducting statistical analysis, or interpreting findings. All research design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, and final academic decisions were made solely by the authors.
Ethics Declarations
World Medical Association (WMA) Declaration of Helsinki–Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Participants
This study was conducted in accordance with the ethical principles of the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki. Ethical approval was obtained from the Research Ethics Committee of Mashhad Azad University. The participants were provided with written consent forms to be filled prior to their participation, and their participation was voluntary.
Competing Interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Data Availability
The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.