Exploring Empathy in online education among Iranian EFL Teachers During Covid-۱۹ pandemic

Amid the coronavirus epidemic, many countries are experiencing a unique situation in human social activities, including education. In some countries, distance education has been substituted by face-to-face one to progress the pedagogy in response to the coronavirus. The teacher is considered a factor of effective learning; that is to say, effective teachers should enjoy certain psychological traits that create a friendly atmosphere where mutual understanding can lead to a better learning situation. Although many studies on online courses have experienced a massive increase, few researchers have attempted to investigate the teachers' characteristics that affect online learning during the coronavirus quarantine. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate Iranian EFL teachers' empathy levels in online education resulting from the COVID-۱۹ quarantine.Furthermore, the significance of the domains of Empathy (importance of others, coincidence with others, and being in others' shoes) was investigated. ۶۰ Iranian EFL teachers of both sexes, male and female, aged ۱۸ to ۶۵, participated in achieving these objectives. Data were collected through Empathy Questionnaire developed by Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright (۲۰۰۴). Results revealed that EFL teachers were empathic teachers, and all the three domains almost equally contributed to creating Empathy in Iranian EFL teachers. Thus, EFL teachers require the three components to be empathic. However, coincidence with others was supposed to have the most important among the three domains in making Iranian EFL teachers' sense of Empathy. The main conclusion reached from the present study results is that empathizing with students can benefit both the teacher and the students. When students see that their teacher perceives them, especially in online classes that have created many problems for students, they will be happy and try harder to make their teacher happy and satisfied by studying more and being more hardworking. Indeed, this satisfactory feeling will result in a positive environment which motivates the students to learn English more enthusiastically.

کلیدواژه ها:

EFL teachers ، Empathy ، Effective teaching ، COVID-۱۹