In a memorable scene from the 1970s film The Paper Chase, Dr. Kingsfield, the imperious Harvard Law School professor, halted a class discussion, reached into his pocket, and said to the film’s student protagonist, “Here is a dime. Go call your mother and tell her you will never become a lawyer.” Impressive, sure. But is this tendency to insult and intimidate students the kind of disposition that would qualify him to teach in a public school classroom?
Most people think of dispositions in the psychological sense, as innate personality attributes like cheerfulness or irritability. But in the world of teacher education, “dispositions” refers to the personal or interpersonal qualities that a candidate needs to develop in order to become an effective teacher. Mary Diez, a professor of education at Alverno College in Wisconsin, who has long been involved in the effort to set standards for teacher certification, describes dispositions as that “third thing” beyond skills and knowledge. She and others argue that the development of appropriate professional dispositions—such as open-mindedness or sensitivity to all children’s needs and strengths—is an essential qualification for would-be teachers.
In recent years, states have begun to include dispositions along with skills and knowledge in the standards they set for teacher licensure. Accrediting organizations now require that teacher-education programs assess candidates’ dispositions along with other professional qualifications. As a result, these programs are grappling with ways to define, assess, and develop candidates’ professional dispositions—efforts that have proved challenging and sometimes hotly controversial.
Shifting Definitions
The effort to define professional dispositions for teachers began with a 1985 article by Jim Raths and Lilian Katz, then working together at the University of Illinois. They were looking for a way to predict which teacher candidates would make good teachers. When they asked teacher educators why they thought certain students would succeed, Raths recalls, academic success or proficiency in methods classes didn’t seem like the most important factor. “They would say, ‘Oh, it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with these other things, like they’re warm, they’re enthusiastic,’ and so on,” he says. Intrigued, the two set out to offer a definition of “professional dispositions” in teaching. They proposed that “a disposition … summarizes the trend of a teacher’s actions in particular contexts.” In other words, in a given situation, a teacher displays a disposition to act a certain way.
The authors also took pains to distinguish dispositions from personality traits, attitudes, or beliefs—factors that cause behavior, which, in their view, are almost impossible to assess, rather than observable patterns of behavior. Although Raths and Katz argued that developing appropriate dispositions was an important goal of teacher education, Raths recommends a cautious approach and stresses that dispositions should not be used to evaluate teacher candidates “unless [we have] pretty strong evidence that they are related to success in the classroom.”
In 1992, as part of the emerging standards movement, the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC), a program of the Council of Chief State School Officers, developed model standards for teacher licensing that covered dispositions along with skills and knowledge. The INTASC standards listed 36 dispositions in 10 core areas, and they implied a much broader definition of dispositions than that proposed by Raths and Katz. For example, under Principle 3, which addresses differentiated learning, one dispositions standard stated, “The teacher appreciates and values human diversity, shows respect for students’ varied talents and perspectives, and is committed to the pursuit of ‘individually configured excellence.’” Although INTASC’s model standards were not binding, Diez notes that they were highly influential and were adopted by at least 27 states, with other states drawing on them to varying degrees.
In 2001–02, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), which accredits more than 600 teacher-education programs, officially required participating institutions to conduct “performance-based” assessments of their candidates’ dispositions, along with providing evidence of their mastery of skills and knowledge. Its definition of professional dispositions was based significantly on the INTASC standards. For the first time, many schools of education began to define and assess the dispositions required of candidates in their programs. But their initial efforts to comply with NCATE’s requirements soon led to trouble.
Controversy Erupts
Shortly after the launch of NCATE’s new policy, teacher candidates in several high-profile lawsuits charged that they had been unfairly treated and/or denied recommendation for licensing because of dispositions-related factors. For example, in Washington State, a student with conservative views successfully challenged a school’s ruling that he could not be recommended for classroom practice until he agreed to attend special sensitivity training. Critics charged that schools were using dispositions as a political litmus test and that NCATE’s definition of teacher dispositions—which read, in part, “Dispositions are guided by beliefs and attitudes related to values such as caring, fairness, honesty, responsibility, and social justice”—showed that the teacher-education establishment had formally endorsed a “politically correct” value system.
In June 2006, NCATE removed the reference to social justice from its definition of dispositions. Its new definition includes the carefully worded expectation that candidates “demonstrate classroom behaviors that are consistent with the ideal of fairness and the belief that all students can learn.” This definition acknowledges that a teacher’s beliefs can have a big impact on student learning, but also stresses that assessment of dispositions should be based on “on observable behavior” in the classroom.
Despite the challenges and controversies, many teacher educators remain convinced that dispositions are a crucial aspect of the profile of a successful teacher. Indeed, practitioners often have very specific ideas of the dispositions essential to good teaching (see sidebar "Professional Dispositions in Practice"). But how to set appropriate standards and help candidates meet them remains elusive. “It’s a soft science,” says Dick Flanary of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. “It’s hard to get your hands around.”
Behavior and Belief
The trickiest part in defining and developing professional dispositions is dealing with the relationship between candidates’ beliefs and observed behaviors in the classroom (see sidebar "Approaches to Assessment of Dispositions"). Some teacher educators use a process of structured reflection to help students explore this relationship as their learning progresses and their classroom skills develop.
Ana Maria Villegas, a professor of education at Montclair State University in New Jersey, wants to be sure that preservice teachers learn to use their skills to help all students. This disposition, she observes, is intimately linked to a candidate’s belief in the “educability of all children.” Thus, at the start of the semester, Villegas asks students to venture hypotheses on the achievement gap as it relates to students of color. At the end of the semester, after students have been exposed to a range of research and ideas, they are asked to reflect in writing on whether and how their ideas have changed. The criteria used to assess their essays, she says, focus on process: “Are the points made with evidence? Have alternative viewpoints been considered?” She and her colleagues then consider the ideas expressed in a candidate’s coursework “relative to how they perform in the classroom with real kids.” They observe candidates’ teaching for evidence of specific dispositions, such as avoiding “preferential treatment” and “providing challenging work for all kids.”
Diez observes that in her work at Alverno College, students’ beliefs and behaviors evolve over the course of a semester as they engage in structured reflections on both their coursework and their classroom experiences. Take NCATE’s recommended “belief that all children can learn.” Candidates, Diez says, “may sometimes come into teacher education having been in classrooms where it was clear that other students didn’t learn. So they come in with the belief, based on their experience, that maybe it’s not possible for all kids to learn.” As a result they might not be disposed to want to work hard with all children. However, if student teachers acquire the knowledge and skills for actually getting results from all children—for example, how to scaffold learning—“that will shift their disposition, because dispositions have to be rooted in experience.” This process, says Diez, emphasizes that knowledge, skills, and dispositions “are not unconnected.”
The Capacity to Learn and Grow
“It seems to me I can’t look at a person’s behavior and judge their motivation,” Diez says. “[But] I can have them look at their own motivation and reflect on ‘how it is I’m making my decisions.’” One powerful tool for stimulating such reflection, Diez says, is the use of videotape in the classroom. “Students have a picture of themselves,” she says. “Sometimes that picture might be, ‘I look very nervous because I feel very nervous.’ But the video might show that they look perfectly confident. Or they might feel very friendly, but then look at the video and say, ‘Wow, I look mean!’”
In this latter case, Diez would use the video as a starting point to help the student engage in a reflection process that will enable them to build a positive classroom presence. This process-oriented approach to dispositions, says Diez, is meant to “build the capacity of teachers to learn and grow,” especially in their awareness of “their impact on learners.” This approach, she adds, is at odds with the “compliance mentality” that leads to a reductionist, checklist approach to dispositions. From understanding one’s deepest beliefs to becoming aware of one’s immediate impact on students, she says, the work of developing proper dispositions invites an ongoing interaction of increased self-awareness and changed behavior.
This doesn’t mean that there won’t be situations where the prospective teacher doesn’t have the right disposition for the job, especially when his or her disposition is grossly inappropriate. But in most such cases the task for teacher educators, says Arthur Wise, executive director of NCATE, is to help candidates see when teaching isn’t the right fit. “In any profession,” he says, “people are selected in, but they also select themselves in. So the more people can come to a realistic understanding of themselves in relation to the job, the better off everyone is.”
Still, says Diez, the ultimate goal is “teaching better and getting more people to be successful.” What’s more, she adds, “there are lots of ways to be a good teacher.” Maybe there’s room for Dr. Kingsfield after all.
Mitch Bogen is an education journalist living in Somerville, Mass.
