“But it wouldn’t be me” : Exploring empathy and compassion for self and others through creative processes

This chapter explores the importance of developing the teachable personality dispositions of empathy and compassion in higher education. Here, empathy is considered as the ability to ‘feel into’ the situation of another, and compassion as the motivation to improve the wellbeing of another. Using the qualitative approaches of narrative injury and ethnography, the author navigates the constraints of a ‘crowded curriculum’ experienced by ‘time-jealous’ educators and students, to offer six guiding principles which may be considered by educators of all disciplines as a starting framework for making empathy and compassion core business and not mere by-products of curriculums focused on knowledge and skills. The author presents three social narratives or ‘happenings’ which are then reflected on with connections to the literature. This analysis reveals the need for holistic development of dispositions such as empathy and compassion that engender care, peace, and wellbeing for stakeholders in higher education.