Introducing Metapathy as a Movement beyond Empathy: A Case ‎of Socioeconomic Status

Abstract

Drawing on the concepts of apathy, sympathy, and empathy and their correspondence with emotioncy, this paper aimed to present the concept of metapathy, as the next and highest level of concern about others. It also sought to investigate if teachers’ concern for their students depends on the students’ socioeconomic status. As the first step, the Teacher Concern for Students (TCS) scale was developed to measure teachers’ types (i.e., apathy, sympathy, empathy, and metapathy) and levels of concern for their students. Next, the construct validity of the scale was verified using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The statistical analysis of the results obtained from 716 participants revealed that teachers teaching in low and mid socioeconomic groups tend to mostly metapathize with their students by showing a high level of concern for their future. On the other hand, teachers teaching in the high socioeconomic group were found to equally metapathize, empathize, and sympathize with their students.

Keywords

• apathy
• sympathy
• empathy
• metapathy
• teacher concern