Dispositional Transference in Teacher Preparation Candidate

Dispositions are behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes that are demonstrated, both verbally and nonverbally, by humans and are a key component for the preparation of future teachers. While it is clearly the responsibility of teacher preparation programs to develop dispositions within teacher preparation candidates, the lack of clarity in both the definition and the assessment of dispositions within teacher preparation programs has made the transfer of dispositional knowledge to a practical application in the classroom difficult. Therefore, this qualitative case study identifies approaches to developing and assessing the transfer of dispositions from theoretical course work to practical classroom application in teacher preparation candidates. The purpose of this research is to allow teacher preparation candidates to self-assess their dispositional knowledge and then observe how these candidates demonstrate dispositional qualities in their teaching in order to identify whether known dispositional qualities in teacher preparation candidates are transferred into the practical application of classroom teaching. Participants, who were all student teachers in their final phase of their teacher preparation program, completed a dispositional survey that asked them to articulate ways they display desired teacher dispositional qualities from five distinct categories in their teaching. The cooperating teacher and the researcher then observed the participant teach a lesson and used the same dispositional survey to identify whether stated knowledge of dispositions was effectually transferred to authentic classroom instruction. The triangulated data revealed that while some dispositional qualities such as caring and diversity were clearly transferred, participants struggled to transfer other dispositions such as critical thinking and collaboration. This study is important to the field of teacher preparation education as the findings contribute valuable insights into the preparation of teacher candidates within a teacher education program.