Empathie macht Schule: Evaluation of the 2024-25 Professional Development Program on Relational Competencies for School Staff and Seminar Leaders in Teacher Education

This evaluation report is set within the context of the professional development program titled Empathie macht Schule (EmS), which can be explored further at www.empathie-macht-schule.de. The foundational ideas of this program are detailed on the website, with a particular emphasis on long-term work with relational competencies, inspired by Jesper Juul and Helle Jensen (Juul & Jensen, 2017). Drawing upon existential, developmental, and systemic psychology, as well as empirical research on the implementation of social-emotional learning (SEL) programs (Durlak & DuPre, 2008; Durlak, 2016), the overarching vision has been to foster the development of relational skills, empathy, and mindfulness among pedagogical staff.
From a systemic perspective, this aims to positively influence the social-emotional climate of the entire school through experiential, dialogical learning approaches (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Juul & Jensen, 2017). The program has been primarily developed and supervised by Helle Jensen, Dr. Lukas Herrmann and Johanna Etzold.
The implementation of the EmS program commenced in 2020, involving the first cohort of pedagogical staff and school leaders from three schools in Berlin (and three control schools). The present evaluation focuses specifically on experiences from the second phase (2024–2025), which includes school staff from four schools, school leaders from seven schools and additionally seminar leaders supervising the final practical in-service component of teacher education for recent university graduates entering the profession. The data for this evaluation were collected via the SenseMaker software, used for internal assessment and reflection during the professional development activities (spanning September 2024 to July 2025).