Empathy In History Education

While reading the original literature about the history education of America, Britain and other countries, the author noticed "empathy" has become one of the controversial focuses during the course of reforms in history curriculum and teaching patterns in the last two decades of the 20th century. In view of concept of "empathy" and no holistic research on it, the author selected "empathy in history education " as the object of study and began the project research.During the research, the author first and foremost tries theoretically discuss the relationship between empathy and history education through literature review: why empathy emerges in history education, in other words, about the backgrounds for empathy appearing in history education, its specific orientation and characteristics does it include? Those are the questions about empathy the author intends to clarify.The research findings have shown that empathy enters the field of history education with history curriculum reform of countries and on basis of new views of history education. It is necessary and feasible for empathy to do so on account of fitting in with disciplinary characteristics of history, the demand of social development and the level of students' age and cognitive development Moreover, it suits the concepts of modern educational psychology, which mainly includes constructivism and humanism and the concepts of modem education which focuses on "children-centeredness", "learning autonomy" and "activity teaching". Consequently, it flourishes in historical teaching practices and receives constant research and practices. However, it is rather controversial because there are certain indefinite factors in carrying it out. To sum up, empathy has been experiencing being understood, accepted and tested while entering the field of history education and it is witnessing the process of being further researched and tested.China is undergoing a new round of reform in history curriculum education. Seeing the whole world, Chinese reforms in history curriculum begins later than other countries. As the saying goes: "Borrow insights from others and benefit from them." We can benefit from other countries' successful curriculum reforming experiences.But, is the idea of empathy beneficial to Chinese historical education? The author argues that it must depend on the reality of China. The analysis on the theory of empathy and Chinese current situation reveal that in theory our study on empathy in history education is comparative weak and not specialized and systematic; In practice, there is no agreement and to some degree, misunderstandings. On this basis, the author thinks it is necessary to further discuss and prospect empathy teaching practices in Chinese history on its theory and from the scope, basic characteristics and variety, on which this paper makes empirical analysis with typical case studies abroad.However, being limited by conditions, this paper tries to discuss and prospect on the theoretical dimension, lacking in the support of empirical study and practical feasibility. With a view to getting more valuable opinions, the author hopes to enable history educators to understand empathy rather systematically and moreover try to put it into practice to revise and perfect these superficial views.