Empathetic pedagogy in national history learning: A strategy for developing reflective history learning for 21st century competencies in the context of Merdeka curriculum implementation in Indonesia

Empathy is an important part of achieving 21st-century competencies. It is the basis for collaboration and communication, especially communication in diverse environments. A lack of empathy can trigger various problems, including bullying and intolerance, and can lead to antisocial attitudes. This study aimed to contribute to solving these problems through the development of reflective history learning strategies to achieve 21st-century competencies. This study is development research with preliminary study stages to determine the need for learning development, strategy development stages that produce reflective history learning designs, testing stages to determine the effectiveness of the strategies developed through a series of tests in different classes, and quantitative and qualitative analysis stages. This study involved 1,000 students as respondents and subjects of learning strategy testing, as well as 15 history teachers from 13 high schools. The results of the study indicated that reflective history learning strategies are needed to help students develop aspects of empathy. Testing of the resulting learning strategies revealed that during the history learning process, students were able to identify socioemotional and factual aspects via reflective history learning strategies. In addition, they were able to provide empathetic responses on the basis of the context of the events they were studying. Some aspects that students paid attention to during the implementation of this empathic pedagogy strategy were equality, tolerance, anti-hoax, and other aspects of humanity. Training students' empathy skills is hoped to create a socio-emotional environment free from bullying, hostile attitudes, and other negative issues because they do not align with 21st-century competencies.