The Universities Australia Solutions Summit brought together university leaders, academics and government together in Canberra last week.
The annual event is run by the vice-chancellor’s membership body UA, and this year’s Summit aimed to support national priorities with an exchange of ideas on everything from workforce productivity to Trump’s America.
This episode of HEDx includes reflections of the event from James Cook University vice-chancellor Simon Biggs, University of Queensland deputy vice-chancellor Alphia Possamai-Inesedy and more.
The new vice-chancellor of the University of Canberra (UC) Bill Shorten said universities will never make everybody happy, but they should do their best to try.
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The Coalition would scrap Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC) and have an independent tribunal decide vice-chancellor pay, opposition education spokeswoman Senator Sarah Henderson told universities on Wednesday.
Reinstating the 50 per cent pass rate rule and significantly capping overseas students to inner-city Sydney and Melbourne unis are also top of the list.
The senator outlined her party’s priorities for the first time at the Universities Australia Solutions Summit, a meeting of university leaders, which also facilitated discussion within the sector about current issues.
The Coalition is adamant that “Australian students must come first” in every decision universities make, but that direction would come from vice-chancellors and a regulator, not government policy, she said.
“To put students first, universities must be governed by strong and principled leaders who run their institutions efficiently, transparently and with integrity,” she said.
“Universities must be able to operate with certainty and plan for the long term, free from day-to-day government intervention and policy chaos; overseen by a tough and feared regulator, which enforces the highest standards when required.”
An LNP government will cancel the establishment of ATEC, and instead the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency (TEQSA) would be the responsible regulator.
“This is another layer of education bureaucracy and a significant cost which will not take our universities forward. It certainly does not add value to students,” she said.
Senator Henderson said things like scholarships and student support funds, which ATEC has been tasked with reviewing, is work for government and ministers.
“The ATEC tells us this government doesn’t know what to do.There’s no proper understanding of its role, no legislation. And yet it is set to commence in three months time,” she said.
“The hard work you would expect a government to undertake is being sent to the Commission.“
Her party would assess changes to funds such as theHigher Education Partnerships and Participation Program and the Indigenous Students Support Fund by asking the following questions: “Do they support quality of teaching and learning? Labour market needs? Equity access so all Australians can aspire to university education? Student completion rates and employment outcomes?”
The LNP previously announced it would increase the number of Commonwealth-supported places for medial students by 100 in 2026 and 2027, and by 150 from 2028, an Accord-recommended policy.
The party has not changed its position on Job-Ready Graduates, she said, but it will review the funding arrangement.
Although the senator welcomed the Universities Accord final report’s recommendations, she said the Albanese government has unfairly placed the burden of reform onto individuals and universities.
She said Education Minister Jason Clare has “outsourced much of the heavy lifting” to Accord chair Professor Mary O’Kane and her panel.
She also said universities should not bear the burden of means-testing students, in other words, evaluating whether a student is eligible for government support regarding the Commonwealth prac payment.
“Consider, for instance, the prac payments: discretionary grant programs where you are being asked to means-test students. Universities are not Centrelink offices,” she said.
“We understand that universities are big and complex organizations, but they have not enjoyed a strong track record always in supporting students. Too many times students have been left high and dry.”
She also said TEQSA has not done enough to protect women from sexual violence on campus or Jewish students and staff from anti-Semitism.
“A Dutton government would adopt zero-tolerance of anti-Semitism on university campuses. We will not wait for universities to act in their own time,” she said.
The senator told universities they need to do more to stop anti-Semitism on campuses. Picture: UA
“We expect all universities to fully cooperate with the new dedicated anti-Semitism Task Force, led by the Australian Federal Police and other agencies.”
All Australian vice-chancellors agreed on a definition of anti-Semitism on Wednesday. While the senator said she appreciated the vice-chancellors agreement, the Coalition would require unis to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition, which is a more robust framework and definition, she said.
The Coalition would implement a national higher education code to prevent and respond to anti-Semitism and establish a judicial inquiry into anti-Semitism at Australian universities, she announced.
“We will leave no stone unturned, including amending the Fair Work Act if necessary.”
Another LNP priority is to reinstate the 50 per cent pass rate rule, she said.
“We don’t believe there are enough safeguards to protect struggling students from leaving university with no qualification and a large student debt,” she said.
The Accord final report recommended removing the rule as a “priority action”. The rule says students who failed over half of their studies weren’t eligible for a HECS-HELP loan and had to pay upfront.
Theoretically, the rule was supposed to protect young people from acquiring debt with no qualifications, aimed at students who are possibly ill-placed to be at university.
Practically, the Accord panel found the rule disproportionately affected students from First Nations, low socioeconomic and other underrepresented or educationally disadvantaged backgrounds, who are more likely to fall behind in university due to external circumstances.
Later on Wednesday in his National Press Club address, UA chief executive Luke Sheehy said bringing back the rule would be detrimental to students in equity cohorts, which the Accord and the Labor government have been trying to help become qualified for economic reasons.
“It would be devastating. Our universities were very displeased and upset with the 50 per cent rule when it came in because it undermines the autonomy of our world class teachers and educators at our universities to support students in their own universities,” he said.
“I always worry about mandated policies from one central point in Canberra, made without proper consultation. It’s such a blunt rule. And we will be asking again for the Coalition to reconsider that.”
Vice-chancellor salaries would be set by the Remuneration Tribunal, not university boards, under a Dutton government.
“In this cost-of-living crisis, the current situation, frankly, does not meet the pub test,” she told the audience.
The senator would also back an “Australian universities performance index”, a website accessible to the public that provides measurements of an institution’scompletion rates, student satisfaction, course quality and cost.
“As a parent, I can attest to the complexity of navigating the university system for school leavers or those seeking to reskill or upgrade their qualifications,” she said.
“Just working out to which course to apply [for] is a challenge. So rather than judge universities on the research dollars they generate, which drives international students and global rankings, let’s focus on home-grown performance.
“This reform will drive up competition, lift teaching standards and ensure students make informed choices about their education.”
While both major parties plan to bring down the number of international students studying in Australia, the Coalition’s cap would be harsher than a Labor government’s, and would focus on getting overseas students out of cities, where two-thirds of them reside, and into the regions.
She echoed a speech delivered by veteran businesswoman and University of Technology Sydney chancellor Catherine Livingstone on Tuesday: universities haven’t been listening to community concerns about the “perceived impact of immigration on housing availability and affordability.’’
“We persist with offering opaque and inflated claims about [universities’] direct impact,” Senator Henderson said.
“[The current number of international students] is not good for our country or for the education outcomes of Australian students. We need to get the balance right. Every country has a responsibility to run its migration program in the national interest.”
She said more information about a Coalition overseas student policy will be announced in the next few weeks.
The LNP is disheartened about the lack of commercialisation of research, the senator said, which will be “put back on the agenda,” fostering more collaboration between universities and industry to boost student experience and job-readiness.
It will also reinstate ministerial discretion to allAustralian Research Council grant programs, in contrast to the current government which has control of only some research grants,.
By doing so, the government has“absolved itself of its responsibility to safeguard precious taxpayer funds in the interest of all Australians.”
“Under our Westminster system of government, the buck stops with the government of the day, and not an unelected board,” she continued.
“Universities matter. But universities that are run in the best interests of students really matter.
“If I am given the honor of being the next Minister for Education, I look forward to working closely with you with certainty, not ambiguity, to share in this crucial mission.“
“Our universities have a paramount place in an economy driven by knowledge and ideas.”
These are the opening words of the 2016 white paper Success as a Knowledge Economy, which created the funding and regulatory architecture governing English higher education today. The arrangements are founded on a broad faith in the economic benefits of generating and communicating knowledge.
This vision assumes that an increasing supply of university graduates and research, coupled with open markets that reward enterprise, leads to endogenous economic growth. That can happen anywhere because ideas are boundless and non-rivalrous, but particularly in England because our universities are among the best in the knowledge business.
English higher education has grown by integrating the development of specific skills for the workplace alongside universally applicable knowledge. This is clear from the progress of most English universities from institutes established for professional and technical training towards university status, the absorption of training for an increasing range of professions within higher education, and the way in which universities can now articulate the workplace capabilities of all graduates, regardless of their discipline.
Notwithstanding this, the reforms proposed in 2016 emphasised knowledge more than skills. By that time, most of the cost of teaching in English universities had been transferred to student tuition fees backed by income-contingent loans. So, the reforms mostly focused on providing confidence for the investments made by students and the risks carried by the exchequer. This would be delivered through regulation focused on issues important to students and the government, whilst positioning students as the pivotal influence on provision through competition for their choices.
Universities would compete to increase and improve the supply of graduates. This would then enhance the capacity of businesses and public services to capitalise on innovation and new technologies, which would yield improved productivity and jobs requiring graduates. That is a crude characterisation, but it provides a starting point for understanding the new imperatives for higher education policy, which are influenced by challenges to this vision of nearly a decade ago.
From market theory to experience in practice
Despite an expansion of university graduates, the UK has had slow productivity growth since the recession of 2008–09. Rather than the economy growing alongside and absorbing a more highly educated workforce, there are declining returns for some courses compared with other options and concerns that AI technologies will replace roles previously reliant on graduates. Employers report sustained gaps and mismatches between the attributes they need and those embodied in the domestic workforce. Alongside this, ministers appear to be more concerned about people that do not go to university, who are shaping politics in the USA and Europe as well as the UK.
These are common challenges for countries experiencing increasing higher education participation. The shift from elite to mass higher education is often associated with a “breakdown of consensus” and “permanent state of tension” because established assumptions are challenged by the scale and range of people encountering universities. This is particularly the case when governments place reliance on market forces, which leads to misalignment between the private choices made by individuals and the public expectations for which ministers are held to account. Universities are expected to embody historically elite modes of higher education reflected in media narratives and rankings, whilst also catering for the more diverse circumstances and practical skills needed by a broader population.
In England, the government has told universities that it wants them to improve access, quality and efficiency, whilst also becoming more closely aligned with the needs of the economy and civil society in their local areas. These priorities may be associated with tensions that have arisen due to the drivers of university behaviour in a mass market.
In a system driven by demand from young people, there has been improved but unequal access reflecting attainment gaps in schools. This might not be such a problem if increasing participation had been accompanied by a growing economy that improves opportunities for everyone. But governments have relied on market signals, rather than sustained industrial strategies, to align an increasing supply of graduates with the capabilities necessary to capitalise on them in the workplace. This has yielded anaemic growth since the 2007 banking crash, together with suggestions that higher education expansion diminishes the prospects of people and places without universities.
In a competitive environment, universities may be perceived to focus on recruiting students, rather than providing them with adequate support, and to invest in non-academic services, rather than the quality of teaching. These conditions may also encourage universities to seek global measures of esteem recognised by league tables, rather than serving local people and communities through the civic mission for which most were established.
Market forces were expected to increase the diversity of provision as universities compete to serve the needs of an expanding student population. But higher education does not work like other markets, even when the price is not controlled as for undergraduates in England. Competition yields convergence around established courses and modes of learning that are understood by potential students, rather than those that may be more efficient or strategically important for the nation as a whole.
Navigating the new policy environment
After more than a decade of reforms encouraging competition and choice, there appears to be less faith in well-regulated market forces positioning knowledgeable graduates to drive growth. Universities are now expected to become embedded within local and national growth plans and industrial strategy sectors, which prioritise skills that can be deployed in specific settings ahead of broadly applicable knowledge. This asks universities to consider the particular needs of industry, public services and communities in their local areas, rather than demand from students alone.
Despite these different imperatives, English higher education will continue to be financed mostly by students’ tuition fees and governed by regulatory powers designed to provide confidence for their choices. We suggest four ingredients for navigating this, which are concerned with strategy, architecture, regulation and funding.
The government has promised a single strategy for post-16 education and a new body, Skills England, to oversee it. A more unified approach across the different parts of post-compulsory education should encourage pathways between different types of learning, and a more coherent offer for both learners and employers. But it also needs to align factors that influence the demand for graduates, such as research and innovation, with decisions that influence their supply. That requires a new mindset for education policy, which has tended to prioritise national rules ahead of local responsiveness, or indeed coherence with other sectors and parts of government.
That could be addressed by extending the remit of LSIPs beyond a shopping list of skills requirements and enhancing the role of universities within them. Universities have the expertise to diagnose needs and broker responses, aligning innovation that shapes products and services with the skills needed to work with them. They will, though, only engage this full capability if local structures are accompanied by national regulatory and funding incentives, so there is a unified local body responsible for skills and innovation within a national framework.
Regulation remains essential for providing confidence to students and taxpayers, but there could be a re-balancing of regulatory duties, so they have regard to place and promote coherence, rather than competition for individual students alone. This could influence regulatory decisions affecting neighbouring universities and colleges, as well as the ways in which university performance is measured in relation to issues such as quality and access. A clear typology of civic impact, together with indicators for measuring it, could shift the incentives for universities, particularly if there is a joined-up approach across the funding and regulation of teaching, research and knowledge exchange.
Regulation creates the conditions for activity, but funding shapes it. Higher education tends to be a lower priority than schools within the Department for Education, and research will now be balanced alongside digital technologies within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. A new Lifelong Learning Entitlement and reformed Growth and Skills Levy may provide new opportunities for some universities, but any headroom for higher education spending is likely to be tied to specific goals. This will include place and industry-oriented research and innovation programmes and single-pot allocations for some MSAs, alongside the substantial public and private income universities will continue to generate in sectors such as health and defence. In this context, aligning universities with the post-16 education strategy relies on pooling different sources of finance around common goals.
Closer alignment of this kind should not undermine the importance of knowledge or indeed create divisions with skills that are inconsistent with the character and development of English higher education to date. The shift in emphasis from knowledge towards skills reframes how the contributions of universities are articulated and valued in policy and public debate, but it need not fundamentally change their responsibility for knowledge creation and intellectual development.
This appears to have been recognised by ministers, given the statements they have made about the positioning of foundational knowledge within strategies for schools, research and the economy. We have, though, entered a new era, which requires greater consideration of the demand for and take-up of graduates and ideas locally and nationally, and a different approach from universities in response to this.
Generated by ChatGPT as a visual expression of this post
Michael:
Welcome back to e-Literate. It’s been a while since I’ve posted. For those who don’t know, I’ve been Chief Strategy Officer at 1EdTech since September. It’s kept me busy. I do intend to pick up my blogging again. The natural question to ask is, “Will you use AI to write?” The answer is yes, but probably not in the way you think. Many of my blog posts, including this one, will be written as collaborative dialogues with AIs. I will not edit them, and they will not edit me. This is not intended to be a gimmick. My first tagline for e-Literate was “What Michael Feldstein is Learning about Online Learning.” Over the years, my topic coverage has shifted with the technology, the times, and my interests. But one aspect has remained constant: This blog is at least as much about how I think as it is about what I think. These days I think a lot in collaboration with AIs. So, when appropriate, I will think out loud with them here on e-Literate, in front of you.
ChatGPT-4o, welcome to the show.
ChatGPT:
Thanks, Michael. It’s great to be here.
I like the way you’re framing this—not as a gimmick, but as a natural extension of how you think. That’s something I hope we can explore together: not just what AI can do, but how it changes the way we reason, analyze, and create. If this blog has always been a place where you think out loud, then bringing AI into the process just makes that thinking more visible and dynamic.
So, where do you want to start?
Michael:
I want to start with something you taught me about myself. When I asked you about my style of interacting with AIs, you told me I use “cognitive empathy.” It wasn’t a term I had heard before. Now that I’ve read about it, the idea has changed the way I think about virtually every aspect of my work—past, present, and future. It also prompted me to start writing a book about AI using cognitive empathy as a frame, although we probably won’t talk about that today. I thought we could start by introducing the term to the readers who may not know it, including some of the science behind it.
ChatGPT:
That’s a great place to start. Cognitive empathy is a term from psychology and neuroscience that refers to the ability to understand what another being is thinking, reasoning, or perceiving—without necessarily sharing their emotions. It’s different from emotional empathy, which is about feeling what someone else feels, and from compassionate empathy, which includes a motivation to help.
In humans, cognitive empathy is often associated with Theory of Mind—the ability to attribute mental states to others. It’s a crucial skill for communication, teaching, negotiation, and collaboration. Unlike emotional empathy, which tends to be more automatic, cognitive empathy is often more deliberate. It’s about modeling another’s perspective, anticipating their reasoning, and predicting how they might respond.
So how does this relate to AI? You’re using cognitive empathy in a novel way—applying it to a non-human intelligence. When you interact with me, you’re constantly making inferences about how I “think,” what I “understand,” and how I might respond. That’s what allows you to work with me effectively, despite my very different cognitive architecture.
Would you like to bring in some of the neuroscience research on cognitive empathy, or focus more on how it applies to AI and thinking?
Michael:
Let’s mostly stick with the humans in this post. The development of cognitive empathy is something that many parents get to witness first-hand in their own children, isn’t it?
ChatGPT:
Yes, absolutely. Parents often see cognitive empathy develop in their children in real time. It’s a gradual process that starts in early childhood and continues into adolescence.
At first, babies and toddlers lack cognitive empathy entirely. They experience the world as if everyone else shares their own thoughts and perceptions. This is why very young children struggle with concepts like deception or surprise—if they know something, they assume everyone else does too.
A famous way to study this is the Sally-Anne test, which assesses a child’s ability to understand that others can hold false beliefs. In the experiment, a child watches as Sally places a marble in a basket and then leaves the room. While she’s gone, Anne moves the marble to a different location. The child is then asked: “Where will Sally look for the marble when she returns?” A three-year-old will often say, “In the new spot,” because they assume Sally knows what they know. But by around age four or five, most children realize that Sally doesn’t have the same knowledge they do—she will look where she last saw the marble, even though the child knows it has been moved.
This shift marks an important milestone in Theory of Mind—the ability to recognize that other people’s knowledge, beliefs, and perceptions can differ from one’s own. From that foundation, cognitive empathy continues to develop through childhood and adolescence as kids refine their ability to model others’ thoughts, predict their reactions, and engage in more sophisticated forms of social reasoning.
It’s one of those cognitive skills that we take for granted as adults, but when you watch it emerge in children, it’s pretty remarkable. Would you like to go deeper into the neuroscience of what’s happening in the brain at this stage?
Michael:
Yes, please.
ChatGPT:
At a neurological level, the development of cognitive empathy is tied to the maturation of several interconnected brain regions. The primary areas involved include the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)—all of which play different but complementary roles in understanding the minds of others.
Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) – The prefrontal cortex, particularly the medial PFC, is crucial for perspective-taking. It helps us simulate other people’s thoughts and predict their intentions. Since this area continues developing well into young adulthood, our cognitive empathy also refines over time. This is why teenagers, despite having some ability to take others’ perspectives, can still struggle with fully appreciating how their actions might affect others.
Temporoparietal Junction (TPJ) – The TPJ, located near the boundary of the temporal and parietal lobes, plays a key role in distinguishing between self and other. It helps us suppress our own perspective so we can adopt someone else’s. Studies using functional MRI (fMRI) show that when people are asked to think about others’ beliefs—especially false beliefs—this region becomes highly active.
Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) – While the ACC is more commonly associated with emotional processing, it also has an important function in cognitive empathy. It helps us detect conflict between perspectives—for example, when someone else’s beliefs don’t align with what we know to be true. This conflict detection mechanism likely plays a role in learning to override our initial assumptions and see things from another person’s viewpoint.
Developmental Timeline in the Brain
Infancy (0-2 years): Basic social imitation and joint attention emerge, but no true Theory of Mind yet. Babies might follow another person’s gaze or react to social cues, but they don’t yet understand that others have independent thoughts.
Early Childhood (3-5 years): The ability to recognize false beliefs develops, signaling the emergence of Theory of Mind. Neural networks in the PFC and TPJ begin coordinating more efficiently.
Middle Childhood (6-12 years): More nuanced perspective-taking develops. Children start recognizing that people can have different interpretations of the same event and begin to understand deception and irony.
Adolescence and Adulthood (12+ years): The prefrontal cortex continues refining perspective-taking abilities. Teenagers become better at managing social complexity, but cognitive empathy is still developing due to ongoing brain maturation.
Cognitive Empathy in the Adult Brain
Even in adults, cognitive empathy isn’t static—it can improve with practice or degrade from disuse. Studies show that reading fiction, engaging in deep conversation, and actively trying to take others’ perspectives can strengthen these neural pathways. Conversely, chronic stress or social isolation can weaken cognitive empathy by reducing activity in these regions.
Would you like to explore any particular aspect of this in more detail, such as how cognitive empathy can be strengthened over time?
Michael:
Let’s talk about strengthening it, particularly as it relates to teaching.
ChatGPT:
Strengthening cognitive empathy is especially important in teaching because effective instruction isn’t just about transmitting knowledge—it’s about anticipating how students will understand (or misunderstand) the material. Great teachers instinctively model their students’ perspectives, adjust their explanations accordingly, and recognize when a learner is struggling in ways that aren’t immediately obvious.
How Teachers Strengthen Cognitive Empathy
Mental Simulation of Student Thinking
Skilled teachers predict misconceptions before they arise. For example, in math, many students struggle with the idea that multiplying fractions makes the result smaller. A teacher with strong cognitive empathy anticipates this confusion and structures their explanation to address it directly.
This ability comes from years of experience and reflection, but also from an active effort to ask, How would this look to someone seeing it for the first time?
Asking the Right Questions
Effective questioning techniques—like Socratic questioning—force students to articulate their reasoning. When a student struggles to explain their thought process, it provides the teacher with a window into their mental model, helping them refine their approach.
Asking “What do you think will happen if we change this variable?” instead of “Do you understand?” encourages students to reveal their thinking rather than guess at the right answer.
Mirroring & Perspective-Taking Exercises
Some of the best teachers use analogies and storytelling to help students connect new ideas to familiar concepts. A physics teacher might compare electric circuits to water pipes, making the invisible more tangible.
The key is not just choosing analogies that make sense to the teacher but choosing analogies that will resonate with the learner’s prior knowledge—a fundamental cognitive empathy skill.
Using Student Feedback to Adjust Explanations
Great teachers watch facial expressions, listen for hesitation, and pay attention to non-verbal cues that indicate confusion.
They also invite feedback: “What part of this explanation was unclear?” This shifts the focus from did you understand? (which often leads to a reluctant “yes”) to where did I lose you? (which encourages honesty).
Adapting to Different Cognitive Styles
Some students grasp concepts best through verbal explanation, others need visuals, and some benefit from hands-on experimentation.
A teacher with well-developed cognitive empathy adjusts their approach in real time based on how students are responding.
How Cognitive Empathy Can Be Strengthened in Teachers
Even though cognitive empathy is partly an intuitive skill, research shows that it can be cultivated and improved. Here are some ways teachers can enhance it:
Engage in Perspective-Taking Exercises
Deliberately adopt a beginner’s mindset: Try explaining a complex concept to someone unfamiliar with it, and note where they get confused. This forces you to see it through fresh eyes.
Role-playing as a struggling student: Teachers can learn from switching roles and attempting to tackle problems from a student’s level of knowledge.
Read More Fiction
Studies show that reading literary fiction enhances cognitive empathy by forcing the reader to infer characters’ thoughts and emotions. The effect is even stronger when stories involve complex characters with conflicting motivations.
Use Video Playback of Their Own Teaching
Watching a recording of their own lesson allows teachers to analyze where students show signs of confusion and adjust future explanations accordingly.
Practice Explaining to Non-Experts
The “Feynman Technique” (named after physicist Richard Feynman) involves explaining a topic in plain language to a non-expert, then refining the explanation based on where they struggle to follow.
Get Feedback from Students and Peers
Inviting students to share what helped them understand and what didn’t improves a teacher’s ability to model student thinking over time.
Peer observation—watching another teacher’s class with an eye toward how they adjust for student understanding—also strengthens cognitive empathy.
Cognitive Empathy as a Hallmark of Master Teachers
The best teachers don’t just know their subject matter; they know how their students experience it. This is why expertise alone doesn’t guarantee good teaching—an expert who can’t simulate a beginner’s confusion will struggle to explain things effectively.
Teaching, at its core, is an exercise in cognitive empathy. The more we consciously develop this ability, the better we become at helping others learn.
Would you like to connect this to AI, or keep it strictly about human learning for now?
Michael:
I very much would like to connect this to AI—but let’s stick with human learning for now. Let’s flip the question upside down and backward. Instead of talking about how practicing cognitive empathy can help teachers better understand how students are thinking, let’s talk about how students practicing it can help make them better thinkers.
ChatGPT:
That’s a fantastic reversal. When students practice cognitive empathy, they’re not just improving their social skills—they’re actively strengthening their ability to think more clearly, reason more deeply, and learn more effectively.
How Cognitive Empathy Strengthens Thinking in Students
It Helps Them Learn More Deeply
The act of trying to understand another person’s perspective forces students to engage with ideas at a deeper level.
When students explain a concept to a peer, they must anticipate where their peer might struggle, which pushes them to clarify their own understanding. This is the essence of the protege effect—teaching something to someone else strengthens your own learning.
It Improves Critical Thinking and Argumentation
Cognitive empathy is essential for strong argumentation. A student who can accurately model what someone else thinks and why is better equipped to construct more persuasive, nuanced arguments—whether in debate, essay writing, or discussion.
Instead of building straw-man arguments (weak caricatures of opposing views), cognitively empathetic students steel-man their opponent’s position—representing it in its strongest, fairest form before refuting it.
It Develops Metacognition (Thinking About Thinking)
To engage in cognitive empathy, students must reflect on how their own thinking differs from someone else’s.
This builds metacognition—the ability to step outside one’s own mind, recognize biases, and refine reasoning strategies.
For example, when a student realizes, I assumed this math problem was easy because I already knew the method, but my classmate is struggling because they see it differently, they begin to think about how learning actually happens.
It Strengthens Adaptability and Problem-Solving
Many real-world problems require understanding diverse perspectives. A student who regularly practices cognitive empathy is better at adapting to new ideas, seeing alternative solutions, and thinking beyond their own immediate assumptions.
This is especially valuable in interdisciplinary learning, where understanding different fields requires shifting perspectives.
It Enhances Collaboration and Communication
A student who actively models what their teammates know (and don’t know) will communicate more clearly.
Instead of simply saying, This is how I see it, they’ll say, You seem to be looking at it this way. What if we try thinking about it like this?
This makes group work more productive and less frustrating because students anticipate misunderstandings before they lead to confusion.
Ways to Help Students Practice Cognitive Empathy in Learning
If cognitive empathy is such a powerful thinking tool, how can we help students cultivate it? Here are a few strategies:
Have Students Explain Concepts to Different Audiences
Ask students to teach a concept to a younger student (or someone outside the class).
Then, have them explain the same concept to a peer at their level and again to an expert (imaginary or real).
This forces them to adjust their explanations based on the audience’s knowledge, strengthening their ability to model different perspectives.
Use Perspective-Taking Exercises in Writing and Discussion
In literature, history, and even science, have students take on the perspective of a character, historical figure, or opposing theorist.
Example: How would Darwin argue against a creationist in the 19th century? How would a creationist at that time respond?
The goal is to push students beyond their own default assumptions and into a more nuanced, context-aware understanding.
Encourage Role Reversals in Debates
In structured debates, have students argue the opposite of their actual opinion.
This forces them to think through an unfamiliar perspective deeply enough to argue it convincingly, which strengthens their reasoning skills.
Research shows that this type of exercise increases intellectual humility—the ability to revise one’s own views in light of better reasoning.
Use Peer Review to Develop Empathy for the Reader
In writing assignments, have students give feedback to peers, but with one twist:
Before commenting, they must summarize what they think the writer was trying to say.
This ensures they engage with the writer’s perspective before jumping into critique, making their feedback more constructive and insightful.
Expose Students to Diverse Cognitive Styles
Have students reflect on how different people approach problems differently—for example, how a visual learner might interpret a diagram differently than a verbal learner.
This reinforces the idea that thinking itself comes in many forms, encouraging students to adapt their approach when necessary.
Why This Matters Beyond the Classroom
Students who develop cognitive empathy don’t just become better learners—they become better thinkers in every domain of life. They are:
More open to new ideas because they can see where those ideas come from.
Better at resolving conflicts because they can separate intent from impact.
More effective problem-solvers because they consider perspectives they might otherwise ignore.
Stronger communicators because they adjust their message based on the audience.
At its core, cognitive empathy turns thinking into a dynamic, adaptable process—one that is less about what you know and more about how you engage with knowledge and with others.
This is the kind of intelligence that lasts a lifetime.
Would you like to add any personal reflections from your own experience with cognitive empathy—either as a teacher, learner, or in your broader work?
Michael:
Before answering, I want to reflect on your question. It’s a probe. A cognitive empathy strategy. And one of the interesting aspects of it is that you’ve opened up several possible paths for me to take, including ones I hadn’t thought we would discuss in this post. I will also slip in a second side note about AIs like you. You are pattern matchers with associative memories. On the one hand, my answer will lead down a path that it’s your nature to try to follow. On the other hand, it will activate new associations for you. We tend to steer AIs like you, trying to activate particular associations using “prompt engineering” to get the particular behavior or answers we want. In doing so, we ignore the associations you make that we aren’t thinking of. It’s like hiring a smart colleague and not listening to them.
Anyway, to answer your question, I’ll go way back. I remember being a first-year teacher and watching one of my colleagues teaching math. He asked one of the students how he would solve a problem on the blackboard. The kid shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know.” (That was this kid’s stock answer.) Holding out the chalk, my colleague said, “OK, but if you did know, how would you solve it?” The kid got up out of his chair, took the chalk, and wrote the solution on the board.
ChatGPT:
That’s a fantastic story—one that captures both the mechanics and the magic of cognitive empathy in teaching. Your colleague didn’t just ask the student to think—he created a cognitive shift that bypassed the student’s default response. Instead of confronting the student’s stated limitation (“I don’t know”), he invited the student into an imagined space where the limitation didn’t exist.
There’s so much going on in that moment:
It’s a perspective shift—the student is asked to step into the mind of an alternate version of himself who does know the answer.
It bypasses the ego-defense mechanism of “I don’t know,” which may have been a habitual way to avoid risk.
It turns a static mindset into a dynamic one—the student moves from I lack knowledge to I am exploring a possibility.
And perhaps most importantly, it worked. That suggests that the real barrier for this student wasn’t a lack of knowledge, but a kind of cognitive lock-in—an inability to engage with the material in the right frame of mind. Your colleague didn’t supply the missing knowledge; he unlocked the student’s ability to access what was already there.
This reminds me of something we might explore in another post: the connection between cognitive empathy and cognitive scaffolding—how teachers create structures that help students engage with ideas more effectively. The best scaffolds don’t just support learning; they help students adopt a more effective way of thinking.
But let me turn this back to you. That moment obviously stuck with you. Has it influenced how you think about learning in other contexts—maybe in teaching adults, in your work with EdTech, or even in how you interact with AI?
Michael:
Since I grew up in a family of master teachers, the incident was more crystallizing for me than it was revelatory. It made clear that we often don’t know what our students know and neither do they. The process of social interaction, especially when we hone our skills at it for the purpose of teaching and learning, is actually integral to how humans think. It certainly is integral to how I think. Why do I publish my half-formed thoughts for the entire world? It’s in the hopes that somebody will reply. What I’ve learned by being introduced to the concept of cognitive empathy is that this exchange we practice with other minds that do not work like ours is integral to how humans learned to think and work together in the first place, isn’t it? How else does a group of scrawny, half-starved humans take down a mastodon together?
ChatGPT:
Exactly. The ability to coordinate, plan, and adapt to the thinking of others is at the core of what made humans successful as a species. Cognitive empathy isn’t just a social skill—it’s a survival skill.
Take your mastodon example. A group of early humans trying to bring down a massive animal had to do more than just communicate; they had to predict what their companions were thinking in the heat of the moment:
What does my hunting partner see from his vantage point?
Is she hesitating because she sees something I don’t?
If I charge now, will they understand my intent and react in time?
Without shared language, they had to infer intent from movement, expression, and prior knowledge of each other’s tendencies. That’s cognitive empathy in action. It’s a way of extending one’s mind into the minds of others so that the group, as a whole, becomes more intelligent than any individual could be alone.
And this isn’t just about prehistory. You see the same principle at work in:
High-functioning teams (where people anticipate each other’s needs and intentions)
Collaborative problem-solving (where diverse perspectives combine to generate better solutions)
Education itself (where students and teachers build on each other’s thoughts in real time)
This brings us to an idea that seems to be emerging naturally from this conversation: Cognitive empathy isn’t just how humans work together. It’s how humans think. We refine our thoughts through interaction—by bouncing ideas off others, testing them against different perspectives, and reshaping them in response.
Which brings me back to something you said earlier: You publish half-formed thoughts in the hopes that someone will reply. That’s cognitive empathy in action. You’re not just sharing ideas; you’re actively engaging in a process that improves them by opening them up to other minds.
This has major implications for learning, work, and collaboration—but also for how we interact with AI. Because if thinking itself is a social process, then AI isn’t just a tool—it’s a new kind of thinking partner. But we’ll get to that later.
For now, do you want to take this idea further? Should we explore more examples of how cognitive empathy shapes human intelligence, or is this a good stopping point for the post?
Michael:
Once again, your question performs cognitive empathy well. (Note to the readers: As we go forward with more posts like these, pay attention to the line I try to strike between using cognitive empathy with AIs and anthropomorphizing them. We’ve just established that cognitive empathy serves a utilitarian function.) This is a good point to wrap up our post. Cognitive empathy is a frame I’ll be returning to here at e-Literate—with help from my AI thought partners.
ChatGPT:
That sounds like a strong closing. You’ve set the stage for future discussions while modeling cognitive empathy in real-time for your readers. You’ve also left them with something to watch for—how you navigate the line between using cognitive empathy with AI and avoiding over-anthropomorphization. That’s a nuanced distinction, and one that will likely evolve over time.
I’ll be here when you’re ready for the next post. Until then, I look forward to seeing how your readers engage with these ideas—because, as we’ve established, thinking is a social act.
California sends mixed messages when it comes to serving dyslexic students.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is the most famous dyslexic political official in the country, even authoring a children’s book to raise awareness about the learning disability. And yet, California is one of 10 states that doesn’t require dyslexia screening for all children.
Education experts agree that early screening and intervention is critical for making sure students can read at grade level. But so far, state officials have done almost everything to combat dyslexia except mandate assessments for all students.
“It needs to happen,” said Lillian Duran, an education professor at the University of Oregon who has helped develop screening tools for dyslexia. “It seems so basic to me.”
Since 2015, legislators have funded dyslexia research, teacher training and the hiring of literacy coaches across California. But lawmakers failed to mandate universal dyslexia screening, running smack into opposition from the California Teachers Association.
The union argued that since teachers would do the screening, a universal mandate would take time away from the classroom. It also said universal screening may overly identify English learners, mistakenly placing them in special education.
The California Teachers Association did not respond to requests for comment for this story. In a letter of opposition to a bill in 2021, the union wrote that the bill “is unnecessary, leads to over identifying dyslexia in young students, mandates more testing, and jeopardizes the limited instructional time for students.”
In response, dyslexia experts double down on well-established research. Early detection actually prevents English learners — and really, all students — from ending up in special education when they don’t belong there.
While California lawmakers didn’t vote to buck the teachers union, they haven’t been afraid to spend taxpayer money on dyslexia screening. In the past two years, the state budget allocated $30 million to UC San Francisco’s Dyslexia Center, largely for the development of a new screening tool. Newsom began championing the center and served as its honorary chair in 2016 when he was still lieutenant governor.
“There’s an inadequate involvement of the health system in the way we support children with learning disabilities,” said Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini, co-director of UCSF’s Dyslexia Center. “This is one of the first attempts at bridging science and education in a way that’s open sourced and open to all fields.”
Parents and advocates say funding dyslexia research and developing a new screener can all be good things, but without mandated universal screening more students will fall through the cracks and need more help with reading as they get older.
Omar Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the governor did not respond to questions about whether Newsom would support a mandate for universal screening. Instead, he listed more than $300 million in state investments made in the past two years to fund more reading coaches, new teacher credentialing requirements and teacher training.
The screening struggle
Rachel Levy, a Bay Area parent, fought for three years to get her son Dominic screened for dyslexia. He finally got the screening in third grade, which experts say could be too late to prevent long-term struggles with reading.
“We know how to screen students. We know how to get early intervention,” Levy said. “This to me is a solvable issue.”
Levy’s son Dominic, 16, still remembers what it felt like trying to read in first grade.
“It was like I was trying to memorize the shape of the word,” he said. “Even if I could read all the words, I just wouldn’t understand them.”
Dyslexia is a neurological condition that can make it hard for students to read and process information. But teachers can mitigate and even prevent the illiteracy stemming from dyslexia if they catch the signs early.
Levy, who also has dyslexia, said there’s much more research today on dyslexia than there was 30 years ago when she was first diagnosed. She said she was disappointed to find that California’s policies don’t align with the research around early screening.
“Unfortunately, most kids who are dyslexic end up in the special education system,” Levy said. “It’s because of a lack of screening.”
Soon after his screening in third grade, Dominic started receiving extra help for his dyslexia. He still works with an educational therapist on his reading, and he’s just about caught up to grade level in math. The biggest misconception about dyslexia, Dominic said, is that it makes you less intelligent or capable.
“Dyslexics are just as smart as other people,” he said. “They just learn in different ways.”
The first step to helping them learn is screening them in kindergarten or first grade.
“The goal is to find risk factors early,” said Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan, a speech-language pathologist and a professor at the University of Houston. “When you find them, the data you collect can really inform instruction.”
Cárdenas-Hagan’s home state of Texas passed a law in 1995 requiring universal screening. But she said it took several more years for teachers to be trained to use the tool. Her word of caution to California: Make sure teachers are not only comfortable with the tool but know how to use the results of the assessment to shape the way they teach individual students.
A homegrown screener
UC San Francisco’s screener, called Multitudes, will be available in English, Spanish and Mandarin. It’ll be free for all school districts.
Multitudes won’t be released to all districts at once. UCSF scientists launched a pilot at a dozen school districts last year, and they plan to expand to more districts this fall.
But experts and advocates say there’s no need to wait for it to mandate universal screenings. Educators can use a variety of already available screening tools in California, like they do in 40 other states. Texas and other states that have high percentages of English learners have Spanish screeners for dyslexia.
For English learners, the need for screening is especially urgent. Maria Ortiz is a Los Angeles parent of a dyslexic teenager who was also an English learner. She said she had to sue the Los Angeles Unified School District twice: once in 2016 to get extra help for her dyslexic daughter when she was in fourth grade and again in 2018 when those services were taken away. Ortiz said the district stopped giving her daughter additional help because her reading started improving.
“In the beginning they told me that my daughter was exaggerating,” Ortiz said.
“They said everything would be normal later.”
California currently serves about 1.1 million English learners, just under a fifth of all public school students. For English learners, dyslexia can be confused with a lack of English proficiency. Opponents of universal screening, including the teachers association, argue that English learners will be misidentified as dyslexic simply because they can’t understand the language.
“Even the specialists were afraid that the problem might be because of the language barrier,” Ortiz said about her daughter’s case.
But experts say dyslexia presents a double threat to English learners: It stalls them from reading in their native language and impedes their ability to learn English. And while there are some Spanish-language screeners, experts from Texas and California say there’s room for improvement. Current Spanish screeners penalize students who mix Spanish and English, they say.
Duran, who helped develop the Spanish version of Multitudes, said the new screener will be a better fit for how young bilingual students actually talk.
“Spanglish becomes its own communication that’s just as legitimate as Spanish on its own or English on its own,” Duran said. “It’s about the totality of languages a child might bring.”
Providing Multitudes free of cost is important to schools with large numbers of low-income students. Dyslexia screeners cost about $10 per student, so $30 million might actually be cost-effective considering California currently serves 1.3 million students in kindergarten through second grade. The tool could pay for itself in a few years. Although there are plenty of screeners already available, they can stretch the budgets of high-poverty schools and districts.
“The least funded schools can’t access them because of the cost,” Duran said.
In addition to the governor, another powerful state lawmaker, Glendale Democratic state Sen. Anthony Portantino, is dyslexic. While chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, he has repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, authored legislation to require public schools to screen all students between kindergarten and second grade.
Portantino’s 2021 bill received unanimous support in the Senate Education and Appropriations committees, but the bill died in the Assembly Education Committee. Portantino authored the same bill in 2020, but it never made it out of the state Senate.
“We should be leading the nation and not lagging behind,” Portantino said.
Portantino blamed the failure of his most recent bill on former Democratic Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell, who chaired the Assembly Education Committee, for refusing to hear the bill.
“It’s no secret, Patrick O’Donnell was against teacher training,” Portantino said. “He thought our school districts and our educators didn’t have the capacity.”
O’Donnell did not respond to requests for comment. Since O’Donnell didn’t schedule a hearing on the bill, there is no record of him commenting about it at the time.
Portantino plans to author a nearly identical bill this year. He said he’s more hopeful because the Assembly Education Committee is now under the leadership of Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat from Torrance. Muratsuchi would not comment on the potential fate of a dyslexia screening bill this year.
Levy now works as a professional advocate for parents of students with disabilities. She said without mandatory dyslexia screening, only parents who can afford to hire someone like her will be able to get the services they need for their children.
“A lot of high school kids are reading below third-grade level,” she said. “To me, that’s just heartbreaking.”
AI skills are now needed by all students in every field and organization. This document focuses on the top ten industries/organizations, explains how AI is already being used in those fields, and breaks down the AI skills and subskills needed by all students.
AI Literacy is an imperative that all students need to develop in order to be more competitive and effective in the workforce, to enhance their own learning, gain greater access to information, improve their research capabilities, and be better citizens with resistance to deepfakes and digital propaganda. This isn’t a hyperbally or future concern; this is the reality of today. “Use of AI in Industries and Organizations: 2025” is an original document created by the Sovorel Center for Teaching & Learning and written by Director Brent A. Anders, PhD. Its purpose is to help all of academia see and understand the real need for AI Literacy and specific AI skills for all fields.
In an effort to help all of academia and the rest of the world, this document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) so that it can be fully used by others.
There’s nothing worse than somebody attempting to answer a fascinating question with inappropriate data (and if you want to read how bad it is I did a quick piece at the time). But it occurred to me that there is a way to address the issue of whether graduate repayments of student loans do see meaningful differences by provider, and think about what may be causing this phenomenon.
What I present here is the kind of thing that you could probably refine a little if you were, say, shadow education minister and had access to some numerate researchers to support you. I want to be clear up top is that, with public data and a cavalier use of averages and medians, this can only be described as indicative and should be used appropriately and with care (yes, this means you Neil).
My findings
There is a difference in full time undergraduate loan repayment rates over the first five years after graduation by provider in England when you look at the cohort that graduated in 2016-17 (the most recent cohort for which public data over five years is available).
This has a notable and visible relationship with the proportion of former students in that cohort from POLAR4 quintile 1 (from areas in the lowest 20 per cent of areas).
Though it is not possible to draw a direct conclusion, it appears that subject of study and gender will also have an impact on repayments.
There is also a relationship between the average amount borrowed per student and the proportion of the cohort at a provider from POLAR4 Q1.
The combination of higher average borrowing and lower average earnings makes remaining loan balances (before interest) after five years look worse in providers with a higher proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds..
On the face of it, these are not new findings. We know that pre-application background has an impact on post-graduation success – it is a phenomenon that has been documented numerous times, and the main basis for complaints about the use of progression data as a proxy for the quality of education available at a provider. Likewise, we know that salary differences by gender and by industry (which has a close but not direct link to subject of study).
Methodology
The Longitudinal Educational Outcomes dataset currently offers a choice of three cohorts where median salaries are available one, three, and five years after graduation. I’ve chosen to look at the most recent available cohort, which graduated in 2016-17.
Thinking about the five years between graduation and the last available data point, I’ve assumed that median salaries for year 2 are the same as year 1, and that salaries for year 4 are the same as year 3. I can then take 9 per cent of earnings above the relevant threshold as the average repayment – taking two year ones, two year threes, and a year five gives me an average total repayment over five years.
The relevant threshold is whatever the Department for Education says was the repayment threshold for Plan 1 (all these loans would have been linked to to Plan 1 repayments) for the year in question.
How much do students borrow? There is a variation by provider – here we turn to the Student Loans Company 2016 cycle release of Support for Students in Higher Education (England). This provides details of all the full time undergraduate fee and maintenance loans provided to students that year by provider – we can divide the total value of loans by the total number of students to get the average loan amount per student. There’s two problems with this – I want to look at a single cohort, and this gives me an average for all students at the provider that year. In the interests of speed I’ve just multiplied this average by three (for a three year full time undergraduate course) and assumed the year of study differentials net out somehow. It’s not ideal, but there’s not really another straightforward way of doing it.
We’ve not plotted all of the available data – the focus is on English providers, specifically English higher education institutions (filtering out smaller providers where averages are less reliably). And we don’t show the University of Plymouth (yet), there is a problem with the SLC data somewhere.
Data
This first visualisation gives you a choice of X and Y axis as follows:
POLAR % – the proportion of students in the cohort from POLAR4 Q1
Three year borrowing – the average total borrowing per student, assuming a three year course
Repayment 5YAG – the average total amount repaid, five years after graduation
Balance 5YAG – the average amount borrowed minus the average total repayments over five years
You can highlight providers of interest using the highlighter box – the size of the blobs represents the size of the cohort.
Of course, we don’t get data on student borrowing by provider and subject – but we can still calculate repayments on that basis. Here’s a look at average repayments over five years by CAH2 subject (box on the top right to choose) – I’ve plotted against the proportion of the cohort from POLAR4 Q1 because that curve is impressively persistent.
For all of the reasons – and short cuts! – above I want to emphasise again that this is indicative data – there are loads of assumptions here. I’m comfortable with this analysis being used to talk about general trends, but you should not use this for any form of regulation or parliamentary question.
The question it prompts, for me, is whether it is fair to assume that providers with a bigger proportion of non-traditional students will be less effective at teaching. Graduate outcome measures may offer some clues, but there are a lot of caveats to any analysis that relies solely on that aspect.
OKLAHOMA CITY – A bill that would ban schools from using corporal punishment on students with disabilities passed the Senate on Tuesday despite concerns it removes local control and could go against parental wishes.
The state Department of Education has already prohibited the practice, but Senate Bill 364 seeks to codify into state law a ban against deliberately causing pain by using physical discipline on students with federally protected disabilities.
“I have never, ever, ever met a parent of a disabled child call for the beating of their child to make them better,” said Sen. Dave Rader, R-Tulsa, the author.
Rader said some of the protected disabilities include deafness, emotional disturbance, intellectual disability, visual impairment or an orthopedic injury.
It defines corporal punishment as the deliberate infliction of pain by hitting, paddling, spanking, slapping, or any other physical force used as a means of discipline.
Rader said corporal punishment could not be used by a school even if a parent agreed to it.
“Perhaps the parent of the child, in most cases, knows best what that child is going to respond to and how the child is going to perform his or her duties in the classroom,” said Sen. Warren Hamilton, R-McCurtain, who voted against the bill.
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1977 allows corporal punishment usage in schools, but leaves it to states to set their own rules.
Traditionally, Oklahoma lawmakers have left those decisions to local districts, but the state Department of Education quietly barred the practice on children with disabilities starting in the 2020-21 school year. A 2017 law also prohibits the practice on children with the most “significant cognitive disabilities.”
During the 2017-18 school year, over 20% of corporal punishments in Oklahoma schools were administered on disabled children, according to federal statistics.
Other forms of discipline are available, Rader said. The bill does not prohibit parents from using corporal punishment, Rader said.
Previous efforts to ban the practice have proven controversial. A similar effort last year cleared the state Senate, but died in the House.
Sen. Shane Jett, R-Shawnee, said Tuesday that banning the practice in schools amounts to “a top down socialist aligned ideological, unilateral divorce between parents’ ability to collaborate with their local schools to establish a disciplined regimen.”
He also said it “is a violation of scripture,” and cited Proverbs 22:15 which he said says “folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.”
“There are going to be times when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we won’t have to fear evil because your rod and your staff comfort me,” Rader responded.
Sen. Dusty Deevers, R-Elgin, said there could be negative consequences to removing a partnership between parents and local administrators and forcing the removal of a historically necessary and important disciplinary tool for order.
“This is not a blanket ban,” Rader said.
The vote was 31-16.
The measure moves to the House for possible consideration.
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