Abstract
Dispositions are considered “soft skills” and, as such, can be difficult to teach and to assess. Given the deep cultural and racial divisions across the country, teachers need to re-embrace roles as creators of classroom climate and defenders of social emotional learning. As a result, the dispositional skills must now include cultural competence and a pedagogy that goes beyond the inclusion of special topics within a curriculum created by the dominant culture. Today's teacher candidates need to hold a commitment to the value of diversity in the classroom. They need to have embedded in their professional practice the ability to hold multiple perspectives as equally “good” and “right” while acknowledging their own unconscious biases. This chapter develops dispositions of diversity, provides an overview of effective program design with specific examples of instructional practices which expand candidates' thought and experiences about their own role in dismantling systemic racism, demonstrates the gaps in dispositional assessment, and suggests ways to remediate those gaps.
TopIntroduction
For the past 50-60 years, teacher preparation programs have been required to construct curricula which help future teachers learn what (content) and how (pedagogy) to teach. The content part of this equation, which is determined by state and national standards and was initially the major focus of preservice teacher instruction, corresponds well with Bloom’s Taxonomy, [Figure. 1]. Teachers must know the content (remember and understand), be able to employ the content to solve new problems (apply and analyze) and be able to explain the content (evaluate and create).
Figure 1. Mapping teacher competencies onto Bloom’s Taxonomy
As educators’ understanding of the complexity of classroom teachers’ work expanded, so did the conceptualization of the focus of teacher preparation programs. Most programs today are constructed on a three-part approach: Knowledge (content), skills (pedagogy), and dispositions (ways of thinking and being) [Figure. 2].
Figure 2. Overlapping components of pre-service teacher instruction
Institutions of higher education must not only design pre-service teacher education programs but must also assure the quality of their graduates by assessing each component of the program. Content knowledge is currently assessed at the course level and beyond the institution through a variety of tests including state level content area and Praxis tests. Effective instructional delivery, pedagogy, is generally assessed by looking for specific actions and behaviors of teacher candidates observed in PK-12 classrooms using both home grown assessments and state and national observation protocols. Evaluating dispositions is not as straight forward because what is being measured must be inferred from what is observed.
This chapter first interrogates the idea of dispositions and then discusses those dispositions which have been found to be pivotal for successful teachers in multicultural classrooms. Next, examples of systems and structures at the course and program level which can be implemented to expand teacher competence in crucial areas to close these gaps are discussed. Finally, gaps are identified between the dispositions required for culturally competent teachers in multi-cultural classrooms and the teacher dispositions commonly assessed used evaluative tools such as the Danielson Framework for Teaching (Danielson, 2007) and the Dispositions, Attitudes and Proficiencies (DAP) (Ingles, 2010, 2014, 2017).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Reflection: Reflection in education is the thoughtful process of reviewing what has occurred in the classroom with an eye toward improving learning. Reflection requires recording events and emotions and contextualizing these in terms of the classroom, the students, the school, the teacher, and the culture(s).
Dispositions of Teaching: Dispositions are ways of knowing and being. Effective teaching dispositions are those ways of knowing and being which create learning environments in which all children grow and learn. Dispositions are considered “soft skills” and, as such, can be difficult to assess.
Dispositions, Attitudes, and Proficiencies (DAP): The DAP is a structured interview process which is used to determine which pre-service teacher candidates possess the dispositions necessary for teaching and which will need to grow these dispositions.
Danielson: Charlotte Danielson developed the Framework for Teaching , a structured method for analyzing teacher strengths and growth areas. This instrument is used both in teacher preparation programs and in school districts and is often referred to as “The Danielson.”
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Coined by Ladson-Billings in 1995, culturally relevant pedagogy refers to education in which teachers help students of color by accepting and affirming their cultural identities, rather than considering children’s deficits.
Culturally Competent Pedagogy: Culturally competent pedagogy (Chiu & Hong, 2005) requires that the teacher be as much of a learner of the student’s culture as the student is required to be a learner of the classroom culture. This way both students and teachers learn to be sensitive and responsive to the variations which occur when two or more cultures exist simultaneously.
Awareness: In teaching, Awareness means watching and listening to children, thinking about the meanings of what is observed, and reacting in appropriate ways. Awareness in the classroom requires the ability to rapidly change focus from one child or activity to the next, and to hold that information in memory as a source for future reference.
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy: Paris (2012) and Paris and Alim (2014) conceived the concept of culturally sustaining pedagogy to describe teaching which is centered around helping students understand and support their culture rather than using the culture to support learning.
Empathy: Empathy is the ability to identify with another’s experience. Empathy can be observed by an individual’s physical reaction to a situation (tears, etc.) but also includes “motivational displacement” (Noddings, 2010, p. 4). When we are empathic we are willing to set aside our wants and needs to work to relieve the suffering of another.