Developing Empathy Skills among Early Childhood Teachers by Fostering Mindfulness in the Educational Setting

The study sought to determine how promoting mental alertness in the educational environment contributes to the development of emotional empathy abilities among early childhood instructors. The descriptive analytical method was utilized to fulfil the study's aims. Frank, Jennings, and Greenberg developed the mental alertness in teaching scale, which served as the study tool. (Frank, Jennings, & Greenberg, 2016), which has three dimensions (calmness, kindness, and clarity of thought), and the Empathy Compassion Scale established by Caruso and Mayer (Caruso & Mayer, 1998), which has six dimensions (suffering, positive involvement, responsiveness). Crying, emotional attentiveness, concern for others, and emotional contagion. The validity and reliability of the research tools were established. The study sample included (300) male and female early childhood teachers recruited using the available method from Nazareth District's elementary schools and children classes. The findings revealed a strong positive relationship between mental alertness in teaching and the development of emotional empathy skills among early childhood teachers, as well as a positive and statistically significant contribution of mental alertness in the educational environment to teachers' emotional empathy. The findings of the multivariate triple analysis of variance revealed that the gender variable had a statistically significant effect on emotional empathy in favor of women. The findings also revealed that there was no statistically significant effect of educational degree, experience, or school level on empathy and mental attentiveness in the classroom. The study recommended that those in charge of the educational learning process focus their efforts on developing specialized training programmes aimed at improving mental alertness among early childhood teachers, and that educational institutions implement supportive policies and programmes to improve mental alertness among early childhood educators. It is suggested that practical training programmes incorporate opportunities. The study suggested conducting research studies to assess the efficacy of programmes to improve teachers' mindfulness in developing empathic empathy skills in the field of early childhood education.