The traditional concept of university is disappearing. An increase in sociodiversity, together with advances in principles such as inclusion, sustainability, equity and social justice, is promoting a role of social responsibility for higher education that goes beyond its classical missions. Today’s demands on universities include openness and cooperation with their community environment, while they are being asked to educate in global, democratic, and inclusive citizenship. This process of transformation is occurring in universities around the world (Buenestado-Fernández et al., 2019) and, particularly, in Spanish universities (Álvarez-Castillo et al., 2021).

In Spain, mission statements relating to diversity, inclusion, and equity stretch from the national government level to the micro-institutional level: according to own data collected in the year 2018, some 66.67% of universities already contemplate diversity in their strategic plans. However, these principles are not always conclusively transferred to their everyday practices.

Thus, when students have been asked to state whether their universities are promoting actions with regard to diversity, or whether lecturers incorporate activities into their teaching that take diversity into account, the degree of agreement is only slight. It is reduced even further, especially in relation to classroom teaching, when the students asked have felt discriminated against for some reason (gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, political positioning, etc.) (graph 1). They probably perceive an even lesser frequency of inclusive initiatives when comparing their expectations, linked to needs, to the everyday reality of teaching environments.

When, in these same universities, teaching staff were requested to comment on the incorporation into their classes of methodologies for respecting student diversity, 960 lecturers responded showing weak agreement (an average of 3.63 points), although slightly above the level of agreement expressed by the student group as a whole (3.46).

These data point towards the need to pay more attention to innovation in inclusive teaching. With this goal, a field experiment was conducted that attempted to clarify whether by reformulating the active methodologies that were being used in a subject to educate in professionalising skills, it was possible to also teach inclusive citizenship skills with a certain degree of success in a small number of weeks. The results obtained were uneven, which suggests that the learning of these skills is not always reached in the short term.

The two capacities evaluated were empathy and moral competence. The first of these refers to sensitivity towards the worldview and emotional sphere of other people, particularly of those who suffer some type of disadvantage. This is a profoundly social disposition, although the definitions and uses made of the concept are very diverse (Hall and Schwartz, 2019). In the field experiment conducted, empathy was understood as a disposition of both a cognitive and an emotional nature, and the Cognitive and Affective Empathy Test (TECA) by López-Pérez, Fernández-Pinto and Abad (2019) was used to measure it. 

For its part, moral competence would be defined as a capacity for resolving conflicts and decision-making based on one’s own internal principles, overcoming reasonings based on self-interest, opportunity, prejudices, or simple considerations. The information on this variable was obtained using the Moral Competence Test, designed and validated by German psychologist Georg Lind (2019). In this test, two narratives are presented that contain real dilemmas. In each of them, the decisions of the protagonists are morally controversial (in the first, two workers enter illegally into the administrative offices of their company to secure the espionage recordings to which the organisation subjects the group of employees; and in the second, a doctor helps a terminal patient to die at her own request). Regarding the decision taken in the narrative, participants must adopt a position against or in favour, and after that they must indicate on a scale whether they accept or reject twelve arguments that are in favour or against the decision of the protagonists of the narrative. Each argument is associated with a different type of moral reasoning.

Figure 2 presents the outline of the quasi-experimental design with which the effectiveness of the teaching of both competences was evaluated within the context of the practical credits of a subject on the theoretical-historical fundamentals of education, belonging to the first-year study plans for the Degree in Primary Education and the Degree in Early Childhood Education at the Universidad de Córdoba.

The methodological intervention aimed at developing empathy included the following fundamental components: the perspective-taking of the vulnerable other in group activities (putting oneself in someone else’s place as far as their beliefs were concerned), affect attunement with the other in this same type of activities (putting oneself in the place of their emotions), group reflection on the motivation of the beliefs and emotions experienced, and individual introspection on the personal and social effects of what the people with whom one has empathised think or feel.

For its part, the methodological intervention oriented towards the development of moral competence incorporated the following elements: a dilemma with ethical components, a debate between students adhering to opposing positions, mutual recognition of moral arguments of quality, and individual introspection on the changes occurring in the argumentation itself. Added to the cognitive conflict (the basic principle of moral education according to Kohlberg), in the ecological experiment conducted, was the importance of social interaction, which was operationalised based on the Konstanz Method of Dilemma Discussion, developed by Lind (2019).

What the results of the study revealed was that, in 10 sessions that made up the intervention, implemented over the course of two and a half months and with a duration of one hour each, empathy did not improve, while moral competence did. Figure 3 shows the stagnation of the empathetic capacity.

Do these results mean that the teaching methodology failed? There is no easy answer to this. Prior to the start of the sessions, the average score in empathy was 126.15, significantly above the 114.73 points of the normative sample that was used to validate the TECA. This strong starting level of empathy demanded, therefore, a high degree of effectiveness from the teaching methodology which, ultimately, was not apparent after 10 intervention sessions.

To a large extent, this consolidated degree of empathy could have been due to the sample composition, which was mostly female (81.94% were women). A large number of studies have found that empathy levels reported by women are higher than those reported by men. This difference was also verified at the two measurement points in the study conducted (figure 4). The explanation could be based on gender stereotypes interiorised by men and women, and which attribute sensitivity and emotionality to the latter to a larger extent. 

The results obtained through the teaching methodology used to facilitate the development of moral competence were, however, different. Figure 5 shows the evolution of the four groups for this variable before and after the intervention.

The improvement in moral competence was significantly greater in the moral development group than in the control group, with no statistical differences existing between the latter and the two remaining groups (Combined and Empathy). In other words, in 10 sessions the teaching methodology showed its effectiveness for the progression of abstract reasoning based on moral arguments (but did not in the 5 sessions devoted to moral development in the combined group).

Unlike the data for empathy, the moral reasoning of students before the intervention was considered low or medium-low. However, in the post-test, the moral development group and, in a significantly smaller measure, the control group, scored more than 20 points, which corresponds to a “pass” in moral competence in a democratic society. Furthermore, the moral development group came close to the threshold of the highest scores. This occurred within the framework of an upwards tendency in the moral judgements of all the groups, perhaps due to the convergence of two factors: the life stage of the participants and the humanistic education component of the qualifications being studied.

The results presented suggest that not all inclusive citizenship skills can be taught with success in a reduced number of education sessions. Moral competence would represent an example among those that can be taught in this way.

In the case of empathy, perhaps it would be preferable to put it to the test in future methodological studies of prolonged duration and that include interaction with people belonging to vulnerable groups. In this sense, the service-learning methodology may be useful because, in it, students carry out a social service in a community environment in which they learn not only professional, but also personal and civic skills. For example, in pedagogic degrees, one could consider the participation of university students in extracurricular educational programmes with children, as well as with their families, within contexts of social disadvantage.

Finally, research for inclusive teaching should also tackle other types of skills (communication within contexts of diversity, attitudes of social responsibility, care ethics, etc.) as well as approaches that integrate professionalising methodologies with those of citizenship education. This would have to be done, however, within the framework of an institutional strategy that would give impetus to the social dimension of universities, into which many other areas of action would be integrated (access and participation of vulnerable students, leadership, curriculum, staff training, community projection, etc.) and counting, ideally, on the commitment of the entire university community.

Article based on the research study directed by José Luis Álvarez Castillo and María García-Cano Torrico, "Atención a la diversidad y educación inclusiva en la universidad. Diagnóstico y evaluación de indicadores de institucionalización", R&D project with ref. EDU2017-82862-R. Field experiment funded by the ”la Caixa” Social Observatory.

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HALL, J. A., and R. SCHWARTZ, R. (2019): «Empathy present and future», The Journal of Social Psychology, 159(3). 

LIND, G. (2019): How to teach moral competence, Berlín: Logos.

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