Fostering Professional Dispositions of Preservice Teachers in an Educational Psychology Course

Introduction

The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), which is currently the sole professional accreditation system for teacher preparation programs in the United States (Altan et al., 2019; Bair, 2017), has charged teacher education programs with the responsibility of addressing and assessing dispositions of their candidates (Al-Rawashdeh et al., 2017; Bair, 2017). CAEP (2015) defines dispositions as “the values, commitments, and professional ethics that influence behaviors towards students, families, colleagues, and communities that affect student learning, motivation, and development as well as the educator’s own professional growth” (http://caepnet.org/glossary). Another explanation of disposition could be derived from Truscott and Stenhouse’s (2018) definition of the term. These researchers define dispositions as internally held values, commitments, or ethics that drive decision making and execution of particular pedagogical strategies with targeted goals in mind.

All preservice teacher candidates, who are matriculated undergraduate students in a teacher education program, are expected to complete an educational psychology course, wherein the course instructors generally focus on building their knowledge, skills, and dispositions for teaching PreK-12 grade students from diverse backgrounds. More specifically, preservice teachers acquire knowledge, skills, and dispositions related to diverse students’ cognitive, behavioral, and social-emotional development by generating repositories of pedagogical approaches for enacting teaching and learning in PreK-12 grades. Although knowledge and skills help teachers achieve successful teaching, it is their dispositions that help them achieve both (Schussler et al., 2010). Thus, in addition to strengthening preservice teachers’ knowledge and skills needed to teach diverse students, teacher education programs are also expected to focus on preparing future teachers to think and behave in new ways (Altan et al., 2019) by fostering their awareness of self and the context within which they are to achieve specific goals (Schussler et al., 2010).

This chapter describes pedagogical approaches drawn from an educational psychology course focused on fostering preservice teacher candidates’ professional dispositions related to 7-12 grades classroom teaching. First, literature related to advancement of preservice teacher candidates’ dispositions is reviewed. Select conceptual frameworks and dispositional attributes are reviewed as related to advancement of preservice teacher candidates’ professional dispositions in teacher education. Next, pedagogical approaches focused on promoting preservice teacher candidates’ dispositions in an undergraduate educational psychology course are showcased. Preservice teacher candidates’ engagement in course-based (college setting) and field-based (school setting) activities are illustrated as contributors of preservice teacher candidates’ understanding and application of professional dispositions. Thereafter, evidence-based pedagogical approaches are suggested as alternatives for enhancing preservice teacher candidates’ dispositions for teaching diverse students. Finally, options for examining development of preservice teacher candidates’ dispositions within teacher preparation programs are discussed as future research directions.