The article substantiates the urgency of the development of empathy of future teachers. It presents the results of studies of the level of empathy of future physical education specialists and describes ways of its development in the context of the subject "Pedagogy (teaching skills)". The purpose of the work is to substantiate the ways of formation of empathy of future physical education specialists in the context of the subject "Pedagogy (pedagogical skills)". The methodological basis presents the study of the theoretical foundations of the modernization of higher education (V. Andrushchenko, I. Ziazun, V. Kremen, K. Robinson, I. Podlasy, L. Grinevich), the concept of humanistic pedagogy and the idea of pedagogy of cooperation (Sh. Amonashvili, S. Lysenkov , V. Shatalov); conceptual background about the essence of empathy development (A. Ben, K. Rogers). The scientific novelty is that it was determined the level of empathy and peculiarities of its manifestation of future physical education specialists; it was proved the ways of formation of empathy of future physical education specialists in future specialists in the context of the subject "Pedagogy (pedagogical skills)". Conclusions. According to the results of this study it was found out that empathy is an important feature of the teacher's personality. It was determined the level of empathy and peculiarities of its manifestation of future physical education specialists (the majority of students have low level of empathy (74 %) and low level of manifestation of empathy, indicating emotional insensitivity and lack of compassion, 9 % of students have an average level of manifestation of empathy, that means that future teachers have an ability to understand others); it was made self-diagnosis of the level of actual empathy of students, with the awareness of its necessity to develop this skill of future teachers (85 % of students said that empathy was an important quality of personality of a future physical education teacher, coach); it was proved the ways of formation of empathy of future physical education specialists in the context of the subject "Pedagogy (pedagogical skills)". The prospects for further exploration in this direction can be seen in the approbation of the developed system of empathy development of future specialists of physical education.