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Perspective-Taking: An Underappreciated but Crucial Social Skill

In a world of complexity, diversity, and conflict, we need every tool available to navigate our relationships, find our way through conflict, and understand the people with whom we interact. Fortunately, there is a long-standing, “tried and true,” dependable tool available to us; yet it is often ignored or rejected as too threatening to closely held assumptions, judgments, and biases.

That tool is perspective-taking. Perspective-taking is the ability to see things from other viewpoints, and it can help us to infer or otherwise understand another person’s feelings, thoughts, and views without having experienced them. With perspective-taking, we can accept that a person’s experiences, biases, and expectations may lead them to see situations differently.

Perspective-taking is present at some level in most effective communications and interactions. It is a precursor to empathy; before we can understand and relate to another person’s experiences and emotions, we need to be able to see from their viewpoint. When we understand another person’s perspective, what they are thinking and feeling, we are better able to relate to them and understand their needs. In the words of the late Steven Covey, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

We might think about perspective-taking as having three forms. Perceptual/visual perspective-taking involves inferences about how another person sees, hears, perceives from their physical location. This is the lowest level of perspective-taking and develops earliest in children. Conceptual/cognitive perspective-taking involves recognizing another person’s point of view, desire, attitude, and intentions. While the importance and utility of this type of perspective-taking seems obvious, its absence is at the heart of much of the conflict we experience in the world today. The third type, affective/social sensitivity perspective-taking, relates to identifying and understanding the feelings of others. This form of perspective-taking can be the most challenging and time consuming. It requires greater patience and understanding than the other forms, but it is also the most powerful form as it features empathy and engagement and often leads to greater levels of caring and deeper commitment.

While perspective-taking at its simplest level is teachable to early elementary school children, it is an important social skill for people of all ages. In fact, it may be more important today than at any time in recent history. Consider these benefits of perspective-taking:

Improved communication and reduced misunderstanding. Clarity is the starting point for mutual understanding and trust building.
Broader insight into how others view a situation or issue. It is important to recognize that there are multiple ways to view almost anything in life.
Reduced bias, faulty assumptions, and misjudgment. Destructive conflict almost always has at its core assumptions, judgments, and biases that confuse and mask what is important and worth resolving.
Revelation of mutual and conflicting interests to be considered and resolved. As we gain an understanding of how others view issues and situations, we are better able recognize areas of agreement as well as clarify where interests and motives may diverge. Consequently, we can focus on real issues and work toward worthy solutions.
Greater empathy. Until we know how others view their circumstances, we are not in the position to accept, relate to, care for, or support them.
Improved self-awareness. Learning how others view issues and circumstances can help us to better understand, evaluate, and appreciate our own perspective.

So, what are some strategies we can use to teach students to practice perspective-taking? Here are some places to start:

Have students look at a picture of a person’s face and predict at least two thoughts the person may be having. Ask students to identify clues they used to guess the thoughts they propose. Discuss with students how observation can lead us to speculate but how knowing and understanding requires engagement. Speculating about what a person is thinking is better than nothing, but asking, listening, and seeking clarity is far more effective.
Present students with a current issue or topic of disagreement. Follow with open-ended questions: How might there be variance in how someone in this circumstance sees or feels about what is happening? Why might there be more than one explanation for how people will react to an experience? What accounts for your perspective, and how might someone else see it differently?
Engage students with case studies featuring conflict from history or lived experience. Coach students as they search for evidence of the absence of perspective-taking and how its presence might have led to the avoidance of conflict and tragedy.
Model perspective-taking in real time. For example, we might seize the opportunity when a student or students are struggling to grasp another’s point of view. We might coach with questions such as: Why would they do/say that? How might they see the situation differently than you? What might they know that would help you to understand their behavior? What might you know that would help to resolve the situation?
Coach perspective-taking when conflicts occur. Stop the action and ask, “What do you think the other person might be thinking/feeling? How could you find out? How might what you learn shift your thinking?”
Invite students to identify misunderstandings and conflicts they have experienced and coach them to analyze how engaging in perspective-taking might have helped to avoid or mitigate the situation.

Perspective-taking may not be a familiar term, but it is an important social skill for our students to learn and practice. Taking time to teach and reinforce perspective-taking can reduce the number and intensity of conflicts in our classes while preparing students for a world in which understanding the perspectives of others is a “must-have” competency.

Strategies to Help Overinvolved Parents Step Back

Communication, In Your Corner

April 11, 2024

Strategies to Help Overinvolved Parents Step Back

For the parents and guardians who see their roles as constant monitors, managers, and even intervenors in the lives of their children, the growth in access to technology, social media, and instant communication has accelerated a troubling trend. Terms like “helicopter parenting” and “snowplow parenting” have been used to describe their ultra-high levels of involvement. Now, some parents and guardians are essentially accompanying their child virtually throughout the school day.

Increasingly, teachers are reporting experiences where parents text their child frequently, even hourly, to check on their progress, performance, and mental state. Others describe instances where parents monitor classroom conversations in real time by having their children maintain an open microphone app on their laptop, tablet, or phone. Still others note parents quickly intervening to mediate classroom conflicts and confusion on behalf of their child rather than waiting for or allowing the student to solve challenges on their own. The list could go on.

Obviously, these parent and guardian behaviors are not encouraging the growth of key learning and life management skills their children need to develop. While parents may feel as though they are protecting, they are also depriving their children of experiences and lessons that will become more and more important as they approach adulthood. Additionally, they are adding to the distractions, interruptions, anxiety, and stress students experience throughout the school day.

However, we need to remember that, for the most part, these parents are well-intentioned. They want their children to be successful, after all, and they are investing considerable effort in trying to help their children navigate life. They also may have become accustomed to immediate access to their child during the pandemic and now have difficulty adjusting to the separation their child’s life at school presents.

While some parents embrace the integrated role they are playing in their child’s life and may resist stepping back, others may not even be aware of the potential problems their behavior can create for their child. Consequently, we need to be thoughtful and sensitive in our approach to nudge and coach our students’ parents and guardians.

It is worth our time and effort to help parents understand the potential impact and consequences of their behavior. They may need knowledge, encouragement, and strategies to help them adjust their behavior and allow their child space to experience learning with more independence.

We can start by sharing with parents and guardians the key developmental skills children and adolescents need to develop as they grow. Skills such as problem solving, conflict management, priority setting, time management, planning, and independence require that young people are allowed and supported to experience and learn on their own.

We might share with our students’ guardians the value of learning from mistakes and overcoming missteps. While coaching can be helpful, young people also need to be given opportunities to experience and work through life challenges. Our experience and insights can help parents evaluate the issues their children face and sort those that are normal and will pass from those that will need more attention and support.

We also might share with parents the emotional and psychological consequences of constant communication to and from their children involving routine information. Texts and other communication during times when students should be focused on learning create distractions that undermine learning efforts. Inquiries regarding progress and performance from class to class interrupt the flow of the day and increase levels of stress, and expectations for responses and assessments of how their child’s day is going can elevate the amount of anxiety students experience.

While asking parents to have no communication with their child during the school day may not be realistic, we might suggest a midday check-in. We can advise them to resist texts and other communication while students are in class and focused on learning. If parents have non-urgent information to communicate, they might remove the expectation that their child respond immediately.

We also can reinforce channels and timely schedules for us to communicate information parents may need and want to know so they do not have to rely solely on their child’s interpretation of expectations and events. Meanwhile, we can reaffirm the processes and opportunities available to parents to reach out to us with comments, questions, and concerns.

Obviously, school and school district policies and guidance need to play a role in the approach and strategies we choose. We may not be able to control the behavior of those parents who become overinvolved in the learning and life of their child. However, we can help them to understand the importance of and consequences associated with the parenting behaviors they choose.

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