Attitudes toward dispositions of teachers.

Abstract

Universities and colleges accredited by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education are facing the prospects of measuring dispositions related to teaching. Dispositions selected for teacher candidates at The University of West Alabama are characteristics desirable in K-12 candidates. This pilot study was designed to assess attitudes toward these dispositions. The sample consisted of preservice teachers, inservice teachers, administrators, and college/university professors. These participants completed the Survey of Dispositions of Inservice and Preservice Teachers (SDIPT). Results indicated that attitudes toward dispositions did not vary as a function of the demographic characteristics. Implications are discussed.

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In recent years, dispositions toward teaching have become important in the education of teacher candidates. The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE, 2002) and the Interstate New Teachers Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC, 1992) have promoted the concept of dispositions as essential to highly qualified teachers' success in the classroom. Colleges of Education have become the center of promotion and assessment of dispositions toward teaching, as well as the production of teachers who are skilled in content areas and pedagogy. The implications for such assessment of dispositions are profound, since this area is by nature subjective and is often dictated by personal philosophies. There are specific problems that exist for an assessment of dispositions; one is, of course, bias. In order to prevent possible bias in the assessment of dispositions, it is necessary to consider the nature of dispositions, the definition of disposition, and the best way to measure selected dispositions objectively.

This study examined the selected dispositions of a College of Education (COE) at a small university in west Alabama. Through a committee process the COE selected 11 dispositions expected of teacher candidates who graduate from any degree program related to education. These dispositions included:

* Collaborates with peers, supervisors, parents, students, and others;

* Applies knowledge and pedagogy, including technology, in all teaching areas and promotes achievement among P-12 students;

* Demonstrates inquiry by posing questions and thinking critically when planning and making other decisions;

* Reflects by thoughtfully examining conditions, attitudes, and educational practices which may enhance or impede student achievement;

* Responds to the needs of all learners by respecting the individuality of each student and planning instructional activities to maximize each student's achievement;

* Exhibits professionalism which embodies a strong commitment to on-going professional development, ethical conduct, and student advocacy;

* Demonstrates reliability by completing assignments, duties, and tasks on time;

* Communicates with confidence and clarity;

* Demonstrates confidence in the students' abilities to succeed and routinely communicates high expectations;

* Exhibits enthusiasm and compassion; and

* Is technologically proficient.

Selection of these dispositions was based on a research process that examined the dispositions selected by other institutions and the College of Education's Practical Experience Model. A six-member committee (University of West Alabama College of Education, 2003) determined that these dispositions were already an integral part of the expectations of teacher-candidates. However, the dispositions were integrated into the teacher characteristics in a way that was not as clearly obvious as the NCATE requirements desired. To determine how individuals involved with the Teacher Education program considered the dispositions, a survey was designed to obtain input on the relevance of the committee's selected dispositions.

Definitions of Dispositions

Research into the definition and nature of dispositions revealed that NCATE (2002) defines dispositions as the principles, commitments, values, and professional ethics that influence attitudes and behaviors toward students, teachers, families, and communities. Dispositions affect student achievement, motivation, and development, as well as educators' professional growth. Dispositions are guided by beliefs, perceptions, and attitudes related to values that include person-centeredness, honesty, fairness, responsibility, and social justice.

Katz (1988) defined dispositions as "a very different type of learning from skills and knowledge. They can be thought of as habits of mind, tendencies to respond to situations in certain ways" (p.30). To explore the implications of observation of dispositions, Katz (1993) stated, "A disposition is a tendency to exhibit frequently, consciously, and voluntarily a pattern of behavior that is directed toward a broad goal" (p. 1). Katz's use of the term "habits of mind" is reflected in other definitions and in many other studies that related to dispositions. Katz (1993) also indicated that dispositions merit research to determine which have the most important outcomes for education; to Katz (1993), the most important disposition was the disposition to go on learning. INTASC (1992) developed a "common core of teaching knowledge" (p. 3) containing 10 principles categorized into knowledge, dispositions, and performance standards. Dispositions were identified for each standard and given specific importance in the evaluation of excellent and effective teaching. Analysis of INTASC standards included the following verbs related to dispositions: realizes, seeks, appreciates, has enthusiasm, is committed, shows, takes, responds, recognizes, understands, believes, persists, values, respects, is sensitive to, makes feel valued, and adopts. Though dispositions were clearly outlined for the INTASC areas, it is the NCATE definition that is most used by institutions today.

Other definitions related to specific dispositions have been constructed over the past decades. Dewey (1910) discussed the teacher's need to study the traits and habits of students to assist in the modification of individual powers in the direction of the materials to be learned and the mental training that made reactions habitual. Dewey said: "Everything the teacher does, as well as the manner in which he does it, incites the child to respond in some way or other, and each response tends to set the child's attitude in some way (para. 47). Dewey's statements imply that children respond directly to the dispositions and attitudes of the teacher; therefore, it is necessary to determine which dispositions, attitudes, or habits of mind are best for the students involved in the education process.

In sessions from The First Annual Symposium on Education Dispositions, Usher (2002) examined Arthur W. Combs' publication, Being and Becoming: A Field Approach to Psychology (1999). Usher reformulated Combs' areas of belief into dispositions, defining disposition as "The qualities that characterize a person as an individual: the controlling perceptual (mental, emotional, spiritual) qualities that determine the person's natural or usual ways of thinking and acting." This list of dispositions for effective teachers included: empathy, positive view of self and others, authenticity, and meaningful purpose and vision. Usher reflected on teacher dispositions in the following way:

Dispositions are not behaviors. They do not exist as distinct entities of actions or thoughts, or traits. Rather, they represent the ways in which an individual has stocked, structured and ordered his or her psyche or mind; or, in the language of the theoretical underpinnings of Combs and this associate, his or her perceptual field.

Dispositions are determiners of behavior though not in a one-to-one way. They are constellations of personal meanings from which behaviors spring and thus they do determine the probability of effectiveness for one's professional choices and behaviors. As such dispositions are not open to direct measurement, however, dispositions can be inferred and inferences can be subjected to standards of validity and reliability for use in research and other measurement tasks.

Dispositions are also not open to direct change from or by the environment though they can change in the same ways that all human changes occur: through changes in one's physical, spiritual, emotional, and cognitive functioning that necessitates dispositional reconstruction. (pp.1-2)

Usher further discussed the effectiveness of dispositions when teacher education candidates so disposed are encouraged to continue in their pursuits of a teaching career. He also suggested that education is finally discovering the efficacy of Combs's views of the helping professions.

Levine (2002) of West Virginia State College, another guest at The First Annual Symposium on Educator Dispositions, defined dispositions toward teaching as the attitudes, tendencies, and personal attributes that candidates hold toward teaching, learning, working with children and adolescents, and being a member of the professional field of education.

All NCATE accredited universities are presently incorporating or have incorporated dispositions into their assessment frameworks of pre-service teachers. Despite the variety and direction of definitions, measurement of dispositions must be undertaken to accommodate the requirements found in the new NCATE standards (NCATE, 2002). Thus, choice of the College of Education's dispositions were based both on the various definitions of dispositions provide above and the NCATE (2002) requirements.

The assessment of dispositions toward teaching carries weight with various entities, but it also carries significant baggage. Careful evaluation of practice and development of official, formal policies is necessary to protect the integrity and the legal position of teacher education programs. This study is designed to provide a basis for making such policy and for emplacing a standardized assessment program to assist teacher educators and teacher candidates make sound decisions about progress and about effectively displaying appropriate dispositions. The following research questions were addressed: What are the attitudes of teacher candidates, in-service teachers, university professors, and K-12 administrators toward the selected dispositions of the College of Education? Do these attitudes vary as a function of age, teacher status, and experience in education?

Methods

Participants Participants for this study came from a population of students enrolled in graduate and undergraduate classes in the College of Education at a "southern" college. As a convenience sample, students who chose to participate completed the instrument. A total of 147 individuals participated in the study, comprising undergraduate teacher candidates (85.71%), in-service teachers (12.24%), and college professors (2.04%). The vast majority of participants (85.03%) were aged between 18 and 30 years. The age distribution of the remaining sample members was 10.20% for the 31-40 years age group, 1.36% for the 41-50 years age group, and 3.40% for those 51 years of age and above. The amount of experience in the field of education for the sample members ranged from 1 year to 34 years (M = 1.42, SD = 4.90). However, the majority of students (82.99%) had no teaching experience.

Instruments The instrument, entitled "Survey of Dispositions of In-Service and Pre-Service Teachers" (SDIPT), was developed specifically for this pilot study. The SDIPT consisted of 40 items that assess the dispositions of the respondent. Consistent with the recent recommendations of researchers (e.g., Weems, Onwuegbuzie, & Collins, 2003) that instrument developers avoid including both positively and negatively worded statements within the same scale, all items in the SDIPT were positively worded. The response options represented 5-point Likert items, anchored by "strongly agree" and "strongly disagree." Thus, scores on the SDIPT ranged from 40 to 200. All items should be key-reversed such that high scores on the SDIPT suggest positive dispositions. For the present study, the SDIPT generated scores for the combined sample that had a classical theory alpha reliability coefficient of .92 (95% Confidence Interval [CI] = .90, .94). This instrument is presented in Appendix A.

Procedures After the dispositions were selected by the COE, the pilot instrument was constructed and its content validated by experts in the COE. Instruments were distributed and completed in various day and night classes of undergraduate and graduate students. Data then were entered and analyzed.

Results and Discussion

Scores on the SDIPT ranged from 107 to 200 (M = 159.71, SD = 16.80). The median score was 158.00. No statistical significant relationship was found between the number of years of experience in education and level of disposition, r = .09, p > .05. Further, no statistically significant difference (t = 0.04, p > .05) emerged in levels of dispositions between participants in the 18-30 age range (M = 159.73, SD = 17.21) and those who were 31 years or older (M = 159.99, SD = 14.61). Also, no statistically significant difference (t = 1.61, p > .05) emerged in levels of dispositions between pre-service teachers (M = 160.56, SD = 17.73) and in-service teachers (M = 155.00, SD = 12.69). These findings suggest that the sample was homogeneous with respect to their attitudes toward teacher dispositions.

Examining the individual items revealed some interesting findings. The percentage of sample members who provided positive responses to each of the 40 items on the SD1PT are presented in Table 1. This percentage was obtained by pooling the "agree" and "strongly agree" responses. It can be seen that Item 4 (i.e., "Teacher dispositions should include punctuality and reliability") evoked the most positive responses, with 92.52% of the sample either agreeing or strongly agreeing with this statement. Of the 40 items, 7 induced positive responses from 90% or more of the participants: (a) "Teacher dispositions should include punctuality and reliability" (Item 4); (b) "Teacher dispositions should include enthusiasm and compassion" (Item 15); (c) "teacher dispositions should include routine communication of high expectations" (Item 16); (d) "Posing questions and thinking critically when planning and making other decisions is a positive disposition" (Item 19); (e) "Responding to the needs of all learners by respecting the individuality of each student is a desirable teacher disposition" (Item 20); (f) "Keeping up with changes in subject matter knowledge is a necessary disposition" (Item 32); and (g) "Establishing a positive classroom management plan and environment is part of a teacher's evidence of his/her dispositions" (Item 36). Interestingly, 39 of the 40 items received positive responses from the majority of sample members. Only Item 1 (i.e., 44.90% positive endorsement rate), received positive responses from less than 50% of the sample. This indicates that although the sample members, in general, had very positive attitudes toward teacher dispositions, they did not consider them as important as content/subject area knowledge. Also, the considerable agreement on the survey's items about dispositions might suggest response bias, which should be the subject of future investigations. See issue's website <http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/fall2004.htm >

Conclusions

In summary, the SDIPT developed for this particular study appears to be a useful tool for assessing individuals' attitudes toward dispositions related to teaching. With a score reliability of .92, this instrument yielded scores in the present investigation that were reliable. Thus, this measure should be used in future studies. For example, researchers could use this tool to investigate dispositions as a function of other demographic (e.g., gender, race), cognitive (e.g., academic achievement), and personality (e.g., self-esteem) variables. Expanding this line of research will help increase our understanding of the attitudes of teacher candidates, in-service teachers, university professors, and K-12 administrators towards an array of dispositions. This, in turn would facilitate the development of standardized assessment frameworks that help teacher educators and teacher candidates alike to make effective decisions that will advance the field of education in general and the education of undergraduate students in particular.

Based on the positive responses across groups in this study, other Colleges of Education can utilize this information to determine items for their own surveys of dispositions or to make comparisons of data on similar items. In turn, the checklists on dispositions can be used to verify the suitability of candidates for teacher education programs and to determine whether teacher candidates need to be made of aware of areas that need improvement prior to their internships. Practicing teachers can utilize the checklists to determine areas of strengths and weaknesses and identify areas to improve. Likewise, teachers could become more reflective about their traditional beliefs. Administrators could utilize the survey in its present form or in a modified form to identify areas for professional development. Parents also could respond to the survey to give input into which teacher characteristics, values, or dispositions they consider necessary to the effective education of the P-12 students in a school system. A reader of this information could trace the progress of dispositions evaluation historically in the review of the literature. Readers also can use the present data to identify which dispositions are most/least approved by this sample. Finally, while it is not possible to generalize to a larger population, the information contained herein can provide insight into the NCATE (2002) requirements concerning the evaluation of dispositions.

References

Dewey, J. (1910). How We Think. Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath. Retrieved from A certain logic ... Selected works of John Dewey: A Mead Project website at Brock University. Retrieved April 17, 2004 from: http://www.pragmatism.org/genealogy/dewey/dewey.htm

Interstate New Teachers' Assessment and Support Consortium. (1992). Model Standards for Beginning Teacher Licensing, Assessment, and Development: A Resource for State Dialogue. Washington, DC: Council of Chief State School Officers.

Katz, L. G. (1988). What should young children be doing? American Educator, 29-45.

Katz, L. G. (1993). Dispositions as educational goals. ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education. EDO-PS-93-10.

Levine, P. M. (2002, November). With a little help from our friends: Developing a dispositional format for teacher education candidates. Paper presented at the meeting of the First Annual Symposium on Educator Dispositions: Effective Teacher--Effective Person. Eastern Kentucky University.

National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. (2002). Professional Standards For the Accreditation of Schools, Colleges, and Departments of Education. Washington, DC: Author.

University of West Alabama College of Education. (2003). Report to the University of West Alabama College of Education. University of West Alabama, Livingston, AL.

Usher, D. (2002, November). Arthur Combs' five dimensions of helper belief reformulated as five dispositions of teacher effectiveness. Paper presented at the meeting of the First Annual Symposium on Educator Dispositions: Effective Teacher--Effective Person. Eastern Kentucky University.

Weems, G. H., Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Collins, K. M. T. (2003, November). The role of reading comprehension in responses to positively-worded and negatively-worded items on rating scales. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Mid-South Educational Research Association, Biloxi, MS.

Dianne Richardson is an assistant professor at The University of West Alabama, and Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Measurement and Research at the University of South Florida.