The objectives of this research are (1) to describe the implementation of group counseling and
general condition of empathy at “Bonaventura” Catholic High School of Madiun, (2) to result
in the model of development of educational films assisted group counseling services to
increase empathy of high school students, and (3) to know the effectiveness of educational
films assisted group counseling services to increase the students’ empathy. The research
design used is Research and Development (R & D) up to the eighth stage, that is, arriving at
the final product, which had been validated by two experts and two practitioners. The data analysis made use of non-parametric Wilcoxon sign rank method. The results of the study are
(1) group counseling services at “Bonaventura” Catholic High School of Madiun did not discuss empathy thoroughly, (2) educational films assisted group counseling services were
discovered, and (3) the trial results showed an increase 27.15%. The results of the statistical test using the Wilcoxon test with Z = 2.8005, in the table of Statisticsb Test, indicated the
score Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed) = 0.005 < α = 0.05. Therefore, Ho was rejected. It means that educational films assisted group counseling proved to be effective to increase the students’
empathy.

empathy, group counseling, educational films