Keyword: undergraduate physics education

ABSTRACT: Motivation drives students' effort, persistence, and deep learning, while empathy underpins trust, inclusion, and emotional safety in diverse classrooms. In undergraduate physics education, where courses are often perceived as difficult, selective, and abstract, understanding how teachers’ and students’ motivation and empathy are related is crucial for creating supportive learning environments. This study explores how lecturers and students in undergraduate physics make sense of the interrelationships between teachers’ and students’ motivation and empathy. This study employed a qualitative exploratory design. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with physics education lecturers and undergraduate physics students. Lecturers were invited to describe their teaching motivation, their empathy towards students, and how they perceived these qualities as influencing students’ learning and well-being. Students were asked to describe their learning motivation and empathy and to reflect on how they experienced their lecturers’ motivation and empathy in everyday classroom interactions. The interview data were analysed inductively using thematic procedures to identify recurring patterns and relational dynamics between teachers’ and students’ motivation and empathy. The analysis reveals that lecturers who describe themselves as intrinsically motivated and caring tend to recount practices such as adapting explanations, providing emotional support, and giving individual attention, which students experience as motivating and affirming. Students often link their own motivation in physics to whether they perceive their lecturers as enthusiastic, approachable, and empathetic, particularly when facing conceptual difficulties. At the same time, some accounts suggest that tensions can arise when strong academic expectations and performance pressures coexist with limited emotional resources, complicating the enactment and experience of motivation and empathy. Overall, the findings illuminate how lecturers’ motivational and empathic stances are perceived to shape students’ motivation and empathy in undergraduate physics, highlighting the need for pedagogical approaches that intentionally cultivate both.