Exploring adolescent empathy toward Young Adult characters

Bullying served as the impetus for a five-day, mixed-methods study in my English classroom. As teacher-researcher, I attempted to explore how Young Adult Literature (YAL) affected empathy levels and behaviors in my adolescent students (M = 15.6 years). At pretest, participants (N = 34) completed a Basic Empathy Scale (BES) to measure self-reported empathy levels and played Cyberball to examine behavior toward other computerized players named after YAL characters. Afterwards, short story-group participants (n = 16) read two YA short stories while novella-group participants (n = 18) read one YA novella that contained examples of bullying. Reflective response questions and class discussion among participants in their respective groups followed. Posttest measurements (BES and Cyberball) were the same as those used at pretest. Although no interpretations about Cyberball behavior could be made (due to what appeared to be an unexplained anomaly), findings from the BES, reflective responses, and discussion transcripts indicated that YAL fostered a significant increase in affective empathy from pretest to posttest for both conditions. Therefore, it is recommended that high school English teachers increase their inclusion of YAL and reader response activities in their curricula