Engaging World History Through the Self: Building Student Empathy With Reflection

Abstract

The best practices for teaching world history, global history, or world civilization surveys have been the subject of urgent quests by high school and university teachers for decades, even as historians have struggled to move away from lecture-based formats to student-centered learning. This paper offers one useful technique employed in the one-semester world history survey course, which aims to help future leaders grow their capability to understand the world around them by using self-knowledge to understand the perspectives of others. Recent research has made clear that such empathic growth is critical to the development of leaders committed to strong relationships, caring work environments, and positive mental health for people at all echelons of an organization. We all hope to work around people with these skills, making this empathy-building approach useful for virtually any learning environment.