Nurturing Compassion-Based Empathy: Innovative Approach in Higher Education

Introduction

In the last decades, the violence has emerged amongst the youth in school (Conoley & Goldstein, 2004; Klewin, Tillmann & Weingart, 2003) and even in higher education (Drysdale, 2010; Langford, 2004). The number is widely a variety of forms into bullying (Slonje & Smith, 2008) and cyberbullying (Campbell, 2005; DeHue, Bolman & Völlink, 2008; Keith & Martin, 2005) and bullying victimisation (Cross et al., 2009). It is in the fact that the forms of instance reported are many of violence which refers to the perpetration experienced by school-aged students. As an increasingly covert and complex phenomenon, it can be seen into the number of ranging of violent forms where this comes from the students and teachers’ behaviour (Klewin et al, 2003). In particular, the emergence of conflicts sometimes between individuals and groups arise from miscommunication about their matters and issues, due to coercive or manipulative language that aims to induce fear, guilt, shame, etc. These violent modes of communication, when used during a conflict, divert the attention of the participants away from clarifying their needs, their feelings, their perceptions, and their requests, thus perpetuating the conflict. In this view, any form in the issue of violence is needed an innovative way to nurture the compassionate skills to underlie the process of preventive action of violent forms.

Through identifying the element of the programs, this may be applied by highlighting the ongoing problems to see the efficacy in reducing bullying. Among them are supervision, group discussion, video presentation, individual talks and supervision (Langford, 2004). These methods with such features including peer or teacher ratings, self-report questionnaires, and observational data can be covered with a variety of numerous training materials to help bring about radical social change (Baldry & Farrington, 2007). The distinct value of compassionate based empathy refers to the empathetic awareness engaged entirely in helping the difficult situations in order to promote the deeper connections of a greater sense of inner peace with the loved ones in harmonious relationships. As a result, this chapter aims to explore the innovative way to nurture the compassionate based empathy in higher education (HE). By proposing the model with an innovative way to explore compassionate based empathy, nurturing innovative approach to empower students’ learning will be focusing comprehensively on encouraging diverse learners with personal and social awareness, empathy, collaborative skills, and conflict literacy as the main foundation in multicultural education. In particular, this chapter will go further in exploring the systematic approach of nurturing the compassionate based empathy which could be potentially applied in HE. Moreover, elucidating this innovative approach in nurturing compassionate based empathy performances becomes a wide exchange to propose framework model in the effort to prevent violence actions. The step which will be dealt with is analysing the current issues of the emergence of violence in HE.