Promoting Empathy Through the Dynamics of Staff Development: What Schools Can Offer Their Teachers as Learners

This is a revised version of a paper presented at the International Conference on Empathy, Experience and Spirituality, June 2001, Roehampton University of Surrey. Based on the presenter’s substantial experience of collaborative support work with teachers in Britain and overseas, the paper was stimulated by Ron Best’s argument in Pastoral Care in Education 18 (2000), on the nurturing of empathy through ‘the experience schools provide for children’, and highlights the opportunities for such provision for teachers’ own experiences in the educational setting.