Empathy & Perspective-Taking

Sensing what others feel and think, and seeing a situation from another's point of view.

K–12 objective ladder

• K D02.S2.K.01 Describe how a friend or story character might feel in a simple situation.
• 1 D02.S2.01.01 Guess how a classmate feels by reading their face, voice, or body.
• 1 D02.S2.01.02 Tell what another person might want or need in a familiar situation.
• 2 D02.S2.02.01 Describe how two people in the same situation might feel differently.
• 2 D02.S2.02.02 Show caring when a classmate is sad, left out, or hurt.
• 3 D02.S2.03.01 Retell a story from another character's point of view.
• 3 D02.S2.03.02 Imagine and describe what it is like to be someone else in a familiar place.
• 4 D02.S2.04.01 Explain why a person might feel the way they do, using clues about what happened.
• 4 D02.S2.04.02 Compare their own point of view with a classmate's on the same event.
• 5 D02.S2.05.01 Take the perspective of a person from a different culture or place and describe their daily life.
• 5 D02.S2.05.02 Recognize when a first guess about someone's feelings might be wrong and check with them.
• 6 D02.S2.06.01 Distinguish empathy, feeling with someone, from sympathy, feeling for someone.
• 6 D02.S2.06.02 Use perspective-taking to understand why a peer acted in a way that upset them.
• 7 D02.S2.07.01 Explain how a person's background, culture, and experiences shape their point of view.
• 7 D02.S2.07.02 Practice empathy across difference by seeking to understand views unlike their own.
• 8 D02.S2.08.01 Analyze a conflict from multiple perspectives, including ones they disagree with.
• 8 D02.S2.08.02 Recognize bias and stereotypes that can block empathy, and question them.
• 9 D02.S2.09.01 Use empathic inquiry to understand another's feelings and needs before responding.
• 9 D02.S2.09.02 Examine how empathy can be limited or expanded by distance, media, and technology.
• 10 D02.S2.10.01 Practice cross-cultural empathy by studying a community's history and values from within.
• 10 D02.S2.10.02 Evaluate how digital platforms shape empathy, compassion fatigue, and echo chambers.
• 11 D02.S2.11.01 Apply empathy to people they have never met, such as those far away or in future generations.
• 11 D02.S2.11.02 Weigh empathy for individuals against fairness to a group when the two conflict.
• 12 D02.S2.12.01 Integrate empathy and perspective-taking into ethical reasoning about complex social problems.
• 12 D02.S2.12.02 Act on empathy to reduce suffering and promote dignity for others, including the more-than-human world.

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