Managing students' problem behaviors in the classroom is a difficult challenge for many teachers. A teacher's ability to empathize with students' perspectives and life experiences could impact their approach to the student's problem behaviors; however, few previous studies examine teacher empathy. This study adapted an existing empathy measure to assess educators' cognitive and affective empathy for students. Participants were elementary school teachers (N = 178) who reported on their levels of empathy and completed measures of teacher‐student relationships, student behaviors, and approaches to handling behaviors for their self‐reported most challenging student. Results indicated the adapted measure reliably assessed teachers' cognitive empathy and an affective form of empathy characterized as empathic distress (experiencing personal distress from others' distress). Teachers higher in cognitive empathy reported more positive mindsets about student behavior, greater competence in handling problem behaviors, increased use of effective problem‐solving strategies, greater relationship closeness, and lower levels of job burnout. Teachers high in empathic distress showed largely opposite findings, with more negative misbehavior mindsets, greater relationship conflict, less competence, fewer problem‐solving strategies, and higher job burnout. These findings have implications for supporting teachers to effectively intervene and build positive relationships with behaviorally challenging students.

中文翻译：

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老师的同理心和有问题行为的学生：检查老师的看法，反应，关系和倦怠

对于许多老师而言，在课堂上管理学生的问题行为是一项艰巨的挑战。教师对学生的观点和生活经历具有同理心的能力可能会影响他们对学生的问题行为的处理方式。但是，以前的研究很少研究教师的同理心。这项研究采用了现有的移情方法来评估教育者对学生的认知和情感移情。参加者为小学教师（N = 178），他们报告了他们的同理心水平，并完成了对师生关系，学生行为以及自我报告为最具挑战性的学生的行为处理方式的测量。结果表明，经过调整的措施可以可靠地评估教师的认知同理心和一种以同情心苦恼为特征的情感同情心（经历了他人苦恼中的个人苦恼）。认知同理心较高的教师报告了关于学生行为的更积极的心态，处理问题行为的能力更强，有效使用问题解决策略的使用增加，亲密关系更加密切以及工作倦怠水平较低。充满同情心困扰的教师表现出截然相反的结果，更多的不良不良行为心态，更大的人际关系冲突，更少的能力，解决问题的策略更少，工作倦怠更高。这些发现对支持教师有效地干预和与行为上具有挑战性的学生建立积极关系具有启示意义。