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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教师同理心和有问题行为的学生：检查教师的看法、反应、关系和倦怠

管理学生在课堂上的问题行为对许多教师来说是一项艰巨的挑战。教师同情学生观点和生活经历的能力可能会影响他们处理学生问题行为的方法；然而，以前的研究很少考察教师的同理心。本研究采用了现有的移情量度来评估教育者对学生的认知和情感移情。参与者为小学教师（N = 178) 他们报告了他们的同理心水平，并完成了师生关系、学生行为和处理行为的方法的测量，以帮助他们自我报告的最具挑战性的学生。结果表明，适应性测量可靠地评估了教师的认知同理心和一种以同理心困扰（从他人的痛苦中体验个人痛苦）为特征的共情情感形式。认知同理心较高的教师报告了对学生行为更积极的心态，处理问题行为的能力更强，更多地使用有效解决问题的策略，关系更密切，工作倦怠程度更低。同理心压力高的教师表现出大体相反的发现，消极的不当行为心态更多，关系冲突更大，能力更差，更少的解决问题的策略，更高的工作倦怠。这些发现对支持教师有效干预并与具有挑战性的学生建立积极关系具有重要意义。