Brazilian children's theories of empathy: Exploring character through art.
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| Title: | Brazilian children's theories of empathy: Exploring character through art. |
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| Authors: | Shaw, Kurt (AUTHOR), Oenning da Silva, Rita de Cácia (AUTHOR) |
| Source: | Journal of Moral Education. Dec2025, Vol. 54 Issue 4, p554-569. 16p. |
| Subjects: | Empathy, Art, Brazilians, Ethnographic analysis, Art & society, Solidarity |
| Abstract: | Though academic research and public policy have directed much attention to how education can promote empathy in children, fewer studies have examined exactly how children define empathy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Brazilian NGO Usina da Imaginação engaged in a long series of arts and storytelling workshops with children across the socioeconomic spectrum and then used research methods from ethnography, literary studies, and documentary film to hear children's ideas and theories about alterity, solidarity, and empathy. These interviews showed that for this group of children, art is a transpersonal feeling: one girl described music as a synapse capable not only of connecting neurons within a brain, but of connecting one brain with another. A close genealogy of these children's theories shows how they emerge from both indigenous and afro-Brazilian practices of esthetic sociality, valuing being-together as a principal element of human flourishing and valuing collective art as a privileged part of that process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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| Database: | Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection |
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| Abstract: | Though academic research and public policy have directed much attention to how education can promote empathy in children, fewer studies have examined exactly how children define empathy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Brazilian NGO Usina da Imaginação engaged in a long series of arts and storytelling workshops with children across the socioeconomic spectrum and then used research methods from ethnography, literary studies, and documentary film to hear children's ideas and theories about alterity, solidarity, and empathy. These interviews showed that for this group of children, art is a transpersonal feeling: one girl described music as a synapse capable not only of connecting neurons within a brain, but of connecting one brain with another. A close genealogy of these children's theories shows how they emerge from both indigenous and afro-Brazilian practices of esthetic sociality, valuing being-together as a principal element of human flourishing and valuing collective art as a privileged part of that process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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| ISSN: | 03057240 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/03057240.2024.2365468 |
