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I am looking for a word/phrase that would mean something of the sort "knowing what others (e.g., students) know in a subject".

I am looking for a word similar to empathy, which is defined by Oxford Dictionary as "The ability to understand and share the feelings of another." The word/phrase in this regard will have a meaning "The ability to understand the knowledge of others."

I hope I clearly stated my problem.

Edit:

@FumbleFingers asked what kind of "knowledge" I mean. Basically I am dealing with a middle/high school teachers' knowledge of his/her students' knowledge in a subject, e.g., physics.

More precisely, teachers' knowledge of what pre-instructional knowledge (or misconceptions or difficulties) his/her students have that might facilitate (or hinder in cases of misconceptions and difficulties) planned instruction.

@Graffito If I understand you correctly, I leaning more towards "to envisage things from other's perspective." My explanation above, I hope, clarifies what I am after.

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  • What kind of "knowledge" do you mean? The ability to understand the theory of relativity, for example? Presumably not the ability to "understand" quantum theory, since we're always being assured that nobody really understands that. And not the ability to understand how societies should be governed, for example, since everyone has different ideas on things like that.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jan 29, 2016 at 14:29
  • Are you refering to learning/understanding (cap)ability ? or to envisage things from other's perspective ?
    – Graffito
    Commented Jan 29, 2016 at 15:51
  • Welcome to EL&U. The following is the rule of this community. Questions on choosing an ideal word or phrase must include information on how it will be used in order to be answered. For help writing a good word or phrase request, see: About single word requests. Please edit your question accordingly.
    – user140086
    Commented Jan 29, 2016 at 16:03

1 Answer 1

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The teacher has foresight into the problems a student might encounter. The teacher is prescient of the issues a student may have.

: having prescience, or knowledge of things or events before they exist or happen; having foresight
Dictionary.com

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  • Prescient was what I was thinking too. Since you have already answered, +!
    – BiscuitBoy
    Commented Jan 30, 2016 at 16:04
  • I like this answer but would "cognizant" be better than "prescient"? Prescient sounds a bit supernatural to me.
    – Al Maki
    Commented Jan 30, 2016 at 17:06
  • I feel cognizant has the connotation of "awareness" rather than "foresight".
    – jxh
    Commented Jan 31, 2016 at 2:25
  • Prescient seems to be a good choice. Even cognizant with the meaning "awareness" seems to fit the purpose. A teacher needs to be aware of the misconceptions students generally have related to a topic or difficulties they face in learning that topic. Doesn't empathy also contain a meaning of "awareness of how others feel"? In that sense, it seems I can use both words, like so: A teacher is cognizant about (is this a correct use?)/ prescient of student's pre-instructional knowledge related to optics.
    – Ufuk YILDIRIM
    Commented Feb 2, 2016 at 9:36
  • To me, awareness has a broad spectrum, but is usually applied at the low end, where the person has heard of the problem, but may not know of a solution. Whereas, prescience will imply the person actively takes steps to head off problems before they arise.
    – jxh
    Commented Feb 2, 2016 at 10:26

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