Science teachers' awareness of empathy skills and integration into their lessons

With the advancement of science, the need for qualified human resources is increasing, and enhancing the quality of education is becoming more crucial. Along with the changing educational approach, it has become important to cultivate individuals who possess various thinking skills, are inquisitive, investigative, and capable of producing knowledge rather than directly receiving it. The importance of 21st-century skills has been reflected in the educational programs in Turkey and aimed to be imparted to students. In order for students to effectively participate in the evolving life and society, it is necessary to enhance their communication skills. For students to communicate effectively, it is important for them to express their emotions and thoughts properly and to understand the emotions and thoughts of others correctly. One of the qualities aimed to be instilled in students in the science education program is the ability to empathize. Individuals who can empathize can establish healthier communication with individuals around them, interpret events with a broad perspective, and solve problems with others more easily. In order for teachers to impart this skill to students and support their development, they need to possess this skill themselves, be able to use it in their lessons, design activities that will enable students to use it, and implement them. Empathic thinking, especially when integrated into the teaching of socio-scientific subjects, will contribute to a better understanding of the subject and make the knowledge more enduring. This research aims to determine the views and thoughts of science teachers on empathic thinking, identify their views on the teachability, learnability, and developability of empathic thinking, determine their perspectives on the place of empathic thinking in science classes, and explore their thoughts on the use of empathic thinking in teaching socio-scientific subjects. In addition to these objectives, examining how empathic thinking is included in the teaching materials prepared by science teachers is also among the aims of this study. The research problem statement is expressed as "How do science teachers address the empathic thinking skill in their classes?" In this research, a case study, which is one of the qualitative research methods, was used. The research group of the study consists of 27 science teachers working in state schools in Kocaeli province. Data was collected from the participants through semi-structured interviews and document analysis. The collected data was analyzed through content analysis. When the research results were evaluated in general terms; it was found that teachers generally have some knowledge about empathy but cannot fully define it, they believe that empathy has an important place in social life, they think that empathy can be learned, taught, and developed but they do not know empathy training techniques, they find it appropriate to integrate empathy activities into some elementary school subjects including science, they think that empathy benefits the teacher in the class, they believe that science classes will enhance empathy, half of the teachers incorporate empathy into their classes while the other half do not, they think that science classes have suitable topics for empathy, teachers do not have a full knowledge of socio-scientific subjects, they address current socio-scientific topics in their classes but do not use empathy much.