Diálogo y empatía en estudiantes de 10 a 14 años

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. Developing the skill of to dialogue is a complex competence that is, nevertheless, vital to the cognitive and affective development, as well as for a democratic and peaceful coexistence in a culturally diverse society. METHOD. This study has three aims: 1) to analyze the factorial structure and reliability of a questionnaire designed to assess the dialogue skills of students aged between 10 and 14; 2) to analyze whether Secondary Education students have better dialogue skills than Primary Education ones, and to determine whether differences exist between girls and boys; and 3) to analyze possible correlations between the dimensions of dialogue and empathy. The participants of this study were 434 students from the last two years of Primary Education (223) and the first two years of Secondary Education (211) attending 6 schools in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country in Spain. The instruments used were the student version of the empathy scale by Eisenberg et al. and a questionnaire to assess skills to dialogue, which was designed ad hoc by the research team. RESULTS. The exploratory factor analysis enabled us to identify three factors in the dialogue skills questionnaire: 1) ease with which the message is understood, 2) recognition and search for collaboration during interaction, and 3) courtesy-discourtesy. The two-way analyses of variance (gender and educational stage) revealed differences between girls and boys, particularly among Secondary Education students, with girls scoring higher for the second factor. Furthermore, positive correlations were found with empathy in the first two factors of dialogue. DISCUSSION. The need for educational training is evident. Firstly, sex differences were particularly relevant in those basic aspects most closely related to skills to dialogue that involve recognition and empathy, particularly in Secondary Education pupils. And secondly, no significant differences were found in complex skills involving collaboration in a dialogue, in which all participants scored particularly low.