Pathways to university faculty accreditation: empathetic listening, trust, and diversity

Abstract

This study evaluates the influence of teachers' empathic listening and diversity in the classroom with the mediating role of trust. The purpose responds to the scarcity of studies on these relationships in the university educational context, especially in what has to do with teacher accreditation and the use of these variables in Latin American classrooms. Thus, hypotheses on the direct influence of empathic listening on diversity and on the mediation of trust in this relationship were evaluated through a Structural Equation Model, using the Partial Least Squares technique in a sample of 107 Colombian higher education professors. The results of this study indicate that empathic listening has a positive and significant influence on diversity and, in addition, indicate that trust is a mechanism that partially, but significantly, mediates the relationship between both variables. These results imply that diversity in the classroom is fostered when teachers improve their ability to listen to students empathetically. They also note that this listening leads to the generation of trust between teachers and students, which facilitates the expression of diversity in the classroom. If teachers accredit competencies in these three variables, meaningful learning becomes visible in students.