Home – Home – Jornals – Professional Education in the Modern World 2018 number 4

The article presents a theoretical analysis of the problem of empathy as a psychological means of reducing the conflict behavior of teachers in the process of mediation. Most of the pedagogical collectives of modern schools are characterized by increased conflict. This causes not only high nervous loads, but also engenders rivalry, discredit, avoidance and adaptation to conflict in the pedagogical environment. As a result of the increase in emotional tension, conflict interaction takes on forms of destructive nature. The psychological characteristics of the teacher's personality and the specific nature of his work have determined the choice of empathy in the total number of mediational techniques as a means of reducing their conflicting behavior. This justifies the relevance of the study of the selected problem in the face of growing levels of conflict in the society. The scientific interest lies in a deeper study of empathy as an effective means of reflexive management of the conflict behavior of teachers. The methodological basis assumes provisions of the personality-activity and value-semantic approaches to the study of the personality of the teacher as a subject of communication and empathy; principles of reflexive control; system of assumptions that reveal the nature of interaction and interpenetration of emotional and cognitive processes. Some theoretical approaches to the analysis of empathy are considered, and its results served as the basis for formulating a number of conceptual provisions that reveal the psychological nature of empathy as a means of reducing conflict resistance and mechanisms of positive impact on the educator. The authors suggest the set of conceptual assumptions that can make the basis of a model of one of the effective means of conducting the mediative process. Further the research is enhanced by the need to conduct a special study of the problem in their interrelations and the subsequent elaboration of the methodology for carrying out the mediative process in the pedagogical environment. Conflict solving and restoration of working relations on the basis of the relationship between empathy and reduction constitutes the prospect of further work in this direction.